essaying

Pluralessayings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   An attempt at something; a try, often at a task whose outcome is uncertain.

   His essaying of the unfamiliar sonata revealed both ambition and inexperience.

   Each essaying brought the inventor a little closer to a working design.

   Similarattempt, try, effort, endeavor, venture

   Note

   A countable noun that takes a plural, essayings, and can be followed by at to name what is being tried. Charles Boner's Mother and Child describes a child making "his essayings at speech", meaning his first tries at talking. The plural is the clearest sign of the noun, since the verb's -ing form cannot be pluralized. It suits contexts where a series of tentative attempts is the point.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of essay.

   The young pianist was essaying a concerto far beyond her years.

   Essaying such a long voyage without a map struck the crew as reckless.

   Note

   The -ing form of a verb that now sounds dated. In its usual use, to essay a concerto or a voyage is to attempt it, and the verb takes a direct object. A rarer intransitive use means to move forth, as into battle. Keep it apart from assay, which means to test rather than to try. The noun essay once carried that testing sense too, which is why the two are easy to blur.

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