experiencing

Pluralexperiencings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of experience.

   The region is experiencing record levels of rainfall this season.

   Experiencing a foreign culture firsthand changed her perspective entirely.

   Note

   The -ing form does verbal work in two places: after be in progressive tenses (the region is experiencing) and as a gerund. Because experience is transitive, the gerund still takes a direct object, as in experiencing a foreign culture. That object is the test that separates it from the countable noun, which takes of instead and can be made plural: the experiencing of grief.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of undergoing an event or situation, or the act of living through it as it unfolds.

   Like tasting a meal yourself rather than hearing someone describe its flavor.

   The experiencing of grief unfolds differently for every person.

   Direct experiencing of the disaster gave the survivors insight no report could.

   Note

   A noun built on the verb rather than on experience itself, it keeps the verb's sense of something happening over time. Because it can be counted, it has a plural, experiencings, which suits careful distinctions between separate episodes of awareness. Peter K. Unger's Philosophical Papers: Volume Two (2006) imagines a split-brain patient "engaged in not one, but two experiencings."

Showing meanings only. Show all 2