embodying

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of embody.

   Embodying decades of craftsmanship, the old violin produced a warm, resonant tone.

   The new constitution, embodying the people's hopes, was signed at dawn.

   Note

   The -ing form does double work. As a participle it opens a modifying phrase, and as a gerund it fills a noun slot, as in the act of embodying an ideal. Usually it takes an object, such as a quality, a hope or a code of laws. The verb can also stand without one, meaning to unite into a body or mass. Once it is counted and pluralized, it has become the noun meaning embodiment.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or result of giving concrete, tangible form to an idea, quality, or spirit.

   Note

   A countable noun that turns the verb's action into a thing. It has a plural, embodyings, and can take adjectives as an ordinary noun does. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1835 cast two rival powers as "two great embodyings of principle." That ability to be counted is how to tell it from the gerund of the verb form. Embodiment is its close equivalent.

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