eliciting

Pluralelicitings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of elicit.

   The interviewer kept eliciting details the witness had not mentioned to the police.

   The ad campaign succeeded in eliciting strong reactions on both sides.

   Note

   One -ing form, two jobs: after be it makes the progressive (they were eliciting feedback), and on its own it names the act (she is good at eliciting answers). It keeps the verb's object, with from for the source: eliciting a confession from a suspect. The final t stays single before the ending, because the stress does not fall on the last syllable.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An instance of drawing out a response, reaction, or piece of information.

   The centrality of these elicitings to Prospero's type of power can only be assumed in the case of Caliban, but is manifest in his use of them to shape the minds of the nobles and confuse the conspiracy of the clowns.

   1992, Mary Beth Rose, Essays on Epistemological Transformations and Theater History

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun counts: one eliciting, several elicitings, each a separate act of drawing something out. It belongs to scholarly prose, where elicitation is the more familiar word. Mary Beth Rose, writing in 1992 about The Tempest, uses the plural for the responses Prospero draws from Caliban and the nobles as instruments of his power.

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