echoing

Pluralechoings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of echo.

   Echoing across the canyon, the shout took several seconds to fade.

   The crowd was echoing the chant louder and louder.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of echo, and the clause shows which one is meant. With no object, a sound or rumor does the echoing, as across a canyon. With an object, someone repeats another's words or opinions. Bridge players and engineers have their own senses: a signal to one's partner, a system passing its input along. As a gerund it takes an object directly (echoing the chant), unlike the countable noun.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The action of a sound reflecting off a surface and repeating, or of anything that returns or reverberates in that way.

   The echoing of the bells carried across the whole valley.

   A long echoing followed the thunderclap and rolled through the hills.

   Similarreverberation, resonance

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted. It takes a plural, echoings, and usually an of-phrase naming the sound. The plural suits the sense well: a sound comes back in successive, weakening returns. The Imperial Magazine of 1819 uses it figuratively, describing a fading opposition as "like the last echoings of the thunder dying upon the ear."

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