embracing

Pluralembracings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of embrace.

   The crowd cheered as the rivals walked off the field embracing each other warmly.

   Embracing change is never easy for a company set in its ways.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it follows be or describes a noun (rivals embracing each other). As a gerund it names the action but still behaves like a verb, taking a direct object: embracing change. That object is the test. When of appears instead, or a plural (embracings), you have crossed into the noun for the act. Every sense of embrace carries over, from hugging to welcoming an idea.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of taking someone or something into one's arms, or of accepting an idea or cause wholeheartedly.

   A long, silent embracing passed between the soldier and his mother on the platform.

   The committee's embracing of remote work reshaped the entire office culture.

   Similarhug, acceptance, adoption

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, this noun can be counted and piled up. C. S. Lewis's The Silver Chair (1953) heaps it into a scene of celebration: "hand-shakings and kissings and embracings of everybody by everybody else." Charles Frederick Briggs in 1849 writes of "fond embracings." The plural suits repeated, mutual displays of affection. The thing embraced follows of, as in a committee's embracing of a new policy.

3. 3
   adjective

   In botany, clasping or wrapping closely around a stem or other support, as the base of certain leaves does.

   Botanists described the embracing leaf base that curved tightly around the main stem.

   Each cotyledon was distinctly embracing, clasping the young shoot as it developed.

   Similaramplectant

   Note

   Botany takes the everyday picture of arms closing around something and fixes it as a descriptive term, the English equivalent of amplectant. It is used of a leaf base or cotyledon wrapped around its stem, and it is not comparable. A structure is embracing or it is not, never more embracing than another. Name the part that does the clasping, then the part it clasps.

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