distancing

Pluraldistancings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of becoming more distant, or of making a person or thing more distant.

   The gradual distancing of the colonies from the homeland reshaped the empire.

   Therapists sometimes describe a deliberate distancing from painful memories.

   Similarseparation, estrangement, detachment, withdrawal, alienation

   Oppositerapprochement, reconciliation, engagement

   Note

   The general noun, at home well beyond public health. Dave Itzkoff, writing in New York in 2008, used it for Bob Dylan's complicated history with the establishment, where the gap is social and emotional rather than physical. The thing that drifts takes of and the thing it drifts from takes from. It can also be counted: separate episodes of withdrawal are distancings.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of distance.

   The senator is distancing himself from his earlier statements.

   By staying silent, she was distancing herself from the dispute.

   Note

   Every use of the verb passes through this form. The construction worth knowing is reflexive: someone distancing herself from a remark or a dispute wants to avoid being associated with it, and the partner preposition is from. Without the reflexive it can mean pulling ahead of rivals in a race or making a place feel remote. As a gerund it shades into the noun for the process, which prefers of: the distancing of the colonies.

3. 3
   noununcountableabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of social distancing.

   Public health officials urged distancing throughout the winter surge.

   Many offices relaxed distancing once case numbers fell.

   Note

   Once COVID-19 made the full phrase routine, social could drop away and the meaning still came through. The short form does most of its work in front of other nouns: distancing laws, new distancing rules, a distancing measure. In 2021 Kristine Sørensen and colleagues argued for rebranding social distancing as physical distancing, a reminder that the space being kept is between bodies.

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