explaining

Pluralexplainings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of explain.

   He spent the meeting explaining why the project had stalled.

   Explaining her reasoning, she walked the committee through each step.

   Note

   One spelling does two verbal jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (she was explaining), and on its own it heads a gerund phrase that can be a subject or an object. Either way it keeps the verb's grammar. It can take a direct object (explaining the delay) or none at all (stop explaining and listen). That sets it apart from the noun meaning "explanation", which accepts adjectives and a plural, explainings.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act or process of making something clear and understandable to others.

   Some patient explaining was all it took to settle the argument.

   The instructions needed a great deal of explaining before anyone could follow them.

   Similarexplanation, clarification

   Note

   Its best-known use is uncountable, in the set phrase you've got some explaining to do. People say it to someone whose conduct needs accounting for. The countable use is rarer and more deliberate. Abraham Kaplan's The conduct of inquiry (1973) speaks of "these various explainings" before sorting them into kinds. Where an ordinary countable noun is wanted, explanation does the same work.

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