discoursing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of discourse.

   The professor was discoursing on medieval history when the bell rang.

   Discoursing freely about art, she lost all track of time.

   Note

   Here the word still behaves like a verb. It takes adverbs (discoursing freely), not the adjectives that go with the conversation noun. Because the verb is mostly intransitive, the topic follows a preposition: discoursing on history, discoursing about art. The transitive uses, meaning debating something or playing music, are obsolete. A direct object after it will sound old-fashioned.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The exchange of spoken words between people; conversation as a social activity.

   The evening's discoursing ranged from politics to poetry and back again.

   She valued the quiet discoursing they shared on their long walks.

   Similarconversation, discussion, talk, dialogue, chat

   Note

   A verb form that has settled into a countable noun, so it takes a plural: discoursings. Dickens and Carlyle both use it in the 1840s, and both give it a weighty adjective: Carlyle's "philosophical discoursings," and the "deep discoursings" Dickens gives Mrs Gamp and Mr Sweedlepipe in Martin Chuzzlewit. The plural suggests a series of long talks rather than a single exchange.

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