dooring

Pluraldoorings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A collision in which a cyclist runs into a car door that has just been opened into their path.

   The cyclist suffered a dooring when a parked driver flung the door open without looking.

   Doorings cluster along streets where bike lanes run beside rows of parked cars.

   Note

   A word from road-safety campaigning, where it names a recognized hazard rather than a stray mishap. Laura Laker's 2012 article "Cyclists must steer clear of the threat of parked cars" describes campaigners in Victoria, Australia, pushing for stiffer penalties after a cyclist's death in 2010, with fines for dooring starting at $122. It counts like any incident noun, as in one dooring or several doorings, and pairs naturally with suffer.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of door.

   He apologized after nearly dooring a rider who was passing on the right.

   Dooring a cyclist can leave the driver legally liable for the resulting injuries.

   Note

   The driver's side of the story. Door as a verb is transitive, so the object is the person struck: dooring a cyclist, nearly dooring a pedestrian. As a gerund it keeps that object (dooring a rider can bring a fine). With an article or a plural and no object, as in a dooring, it has become the noun for the collision instead.

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   The structural frame that surrounds and supports a door.

   The heavy oak dooring had warped with age and no longer held the door square.

   He leaned against the dooring and watched the rain fall in the yard.

   Note

   An old builder's word that has dropped out of use, made from door + -ing to name the woodwork around the opening rather than the door itself. Milton's A Brief History of Moscovia (1682) writes of a noise that "shakes the door-rings of houses," with the old hyphenated spelling. Today the frame is a doorframe. Met in an older text, dooring has nothing to do with the cycling collision.

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