faring

Pluralfarings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of fare.

   She wondered how her old classmates were faring years after graduation.

   The small bakery is faring better than expected this quarter.

   Note

   The -ing form of a verb that never takes an object. One fares well, badly or better than expected, but one never fares something. That is why it so often appears in the progressive with an adverb of manner, as in "how are they faring?" The verb's traveling sense, "to go," is archaic now, yet the same spelling survives as the noun for a journey.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A journey or trek, especially an adventurous one.

   Their faring across the mountains took three long weeks.

   She wrote of her faring through distant lands in a worn leather journal.

   Similarjourney, trek, voyage, expedition, odyssey

3. 3
   nounobsoleteScotland

   Alternative form of fairing (something edible; fare). Obsolete and Scottish.

   Note

   A Scots spelling, now obsolete, of fairing in its sense of food or fare. Lady Nairne's song Caller Herrin' (c. 1798) shows it in use: the herring are "bonnie fish and halesome farin'," meaning wholesome eating, with the final g dropped as Scots speech drops it. Outside Scots verse it is best left as a reading word. Elsewhere, fairing has drifted to gifts from a fair and ginger nuts.

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