downloading

Pluraldownloadings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act or process of copying data from a remote system, such as a server, onto a local device.

   Like making a personal copy of a document held in a distant filing cabinet and bringing it to your own desk.

   Downloading from official sources reduces the risk of installing malware.

   Heavy downloading during peak hours strained the company's bandwidth.

   Oppositeuploading

   Note

   Unlike the verb's gerund, this noun can take a plural. Donna J. Haraway's Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium (2018) measures "the rate of new downloadings from the Internet" in copies per month, treating each transfer as a countable event. Uncountable use sits alongside it: heavy downloading names the activity as a whole, with no thought of separate acts.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of download.

   The technician is downloading the latest firmware to each device.

   Customers kept downloading the app faster than the servers could handle.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After be it makes the progressive (is downloading a file), and as a gerund it fills noun slots (downloading takes time). It carries every sense of the verb, including two far from computing: loading a muzzle-loader with less powder than its designed charge, and, in Canada, handing a government service down to a lower level of government. Its loose use for upload or install is nonstandard.

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