flooring

Pluralfloorings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The material used to construct or cover the surface of a floor.

   The contractor recommended vinyl flooring for the damp basement.

   Hardwood flooring adds warmth to a living room.

   Note

   As a material it is usually a mass noun: you lay new flooring, not a flooring. The plural appears when the trade sorts the material into kinds. Susannah Vesey's 1994 report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has Mohawk Industries eyeing "tile, resilient or even wood floorings". The type is normally named by the word in front: tile, wood, vinyl, hardwood.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The flat lower surface of a room, on which people stand and walk.

   Dust had settled across the flooring of the abandoned hall.

   The flooring sloped slightly toward the drain in the center.

   Note

   The oldest layer of the word: Middle English already had floring. In use it slides easily toward the material sense. When Erin Barnes lists floorings beside paints, hairsprays and toys as sources of phthalates in E: The Environmental Magazine (2008), the plural points to products laid down rather than rooms walked across. Both countable and mass uses are normal.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The act of knocking an opponent down to the floor; a knockdown.

   The flooring of the defending champion brought the arena to its feet.

   Referees paused the match after the brutal flooring.

   Similarknockdown

   Note

   A word from the fight world. In boxing and other combat sports it means sending an opponent to the canvas with a legal blow, after which the referee begins a count over the downed fighter. It usually takes of before the person knocked down: the flooring of the champion. It is the noun behind floor in its "strike down" sense.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of floor.

   The crew finished flooring the warehouse ahead of schedule.

   He kept flooring the accelerator as the engine roared.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb floor, and it shares its spelling with the nouns. Flooring the warehouse is the verb, and the flooring in the warehouse is the thing. Two uses are worth handling with care. Flooring it, meaning pushing the accelerator to the floor, is slang. Flooring a picture, meaning hanging it too low to be seen, is dated.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4