establishing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of establish.

   The company is establishing offices in three new cities.

   Establishing trust between the two nations proved difficult.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. After a form of be it is the progressive verb (the company is establishing offices). At the head of a phrase it is a gerund, and it is still verb enough to take a direct object, because establish is transitive: establishing trust, not establishing of trust. Once it takes the and of, it has become the noun for the act.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act by which something is brought into existence or set up; establishment.

   The establishing of the trade route opened the region to new commerce.

   Decades passed between the establishing of the colony and its first free election.

   Similarfounding, establishment, foundation, creation

   Note

   Here the act has become a countable noun. It takes the and an of-phrase, and it even takes a plural. Matthew Habershon's The Shadows of the Evening (1845) speaks of "the overturnings and establishings of the various successive empires." That phrase treats each setting-up as its own event, paired with its opposite and repeated across history. The plural lets each founding be counted separately.

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