discharging

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of discharge.

   The factory was fined for discharging waste into the river.

   Crews were discharging cargo at the dock when the storm rolled in.

   Note

   One -ing form carries every branch of the verb: a debtor discharging an obligation, a court discharging a claim, a gun discharging a shot. As a gerund it keeps the verb's direct hold on an object, as in fined for discharging waste. The noun of the act needs of in between: the discharging of waste. If you can drop the of and attach an object directly, you are using the verb.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process of releasing, emitting, or sending something away.

   The discharging of wastewater must follow strict environmental rules.

   The discharging of patients was delayed for hours by missing paperwork.

   Similarrelease, emission

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted and made plural. Phaedra C. Pezzullo's Cultural Studies and Environment, Revisited (2013) piles up dischargings beside bubblings, stinkings and quiverings to describe a geyser field. In the plural it names separate episodes of release rather than a single procedure. That makes it a vivid, almost bodily word when stacked with other -ing nouns for effect.

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