drugging

Pluraldruggings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of drug.

   Someone had been drugging the guard dogs each night before the burglaries.

   Drugging an opponent's racehorse counts as serious fraud.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb drug. Its transitive uses split by object: you can drug a victim, or drug the drink or food meant for them. Rarer intransitive uses mean prescribing medicine or taking drugs oneself. Southern US dialect also has drug as a past tense of drag, but that drug has no -ing form, so drugging never means dragging.

   He was caught drugging her wine at the bar.

   They suspected someone was drugging the dogs' food.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of dosing a person or animal with drugs, usually in a way that is unlawful or improper.

   Investigators traced the drugging back to a single bartender.

   The drugging of the guard dogs let the thieves slip inside unnoticed.

   Similardoping

   Note

   Here the drugs are given to someone else, and usually wrongly. The noun takes a plural when incidents are counted. American Law Reports (1998) speaks of alleged druggings of horses in racing cases where trainers' responsibility was disputed. Alleged is a natural companion, because a drugging is often a charge before it is a proven fact. Contrast the drug-use meaning, where the person drugging is the one taking the drugs.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialuncountable

   The habit of using drugs; drug use as an ongoing practice.

   Years of heavy drugging had wrecked his health and his relationships.

   She blamed his drugging for the money that kept disappearing.

   Note

   Its natural home is the rhyming pair drinking and drugging, which treats alcohol and drugs as two halves of one destructive habit: quitting all that drinking and drugging. The word is casual, and in formal or clinical writing drug use is the safer choice. Like drinking, it can name a whole way of life rather than a single act.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3