forming

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of form.

   A thin layer of ice was forming on the pond overnight.

   Forming new habits takes far longer than most people expect.

   Note

   The -ing form carries the verb's two habits. In ice was forming it is intransitive, meaning to take shape. In forming new habits it is transitive and keeps a direct object, which a gerund still can. That bare object is the easiest way to tell it from the noun for the act itself, which needs of instead: the forming of habits.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process by which something is given shape or brought into being; formation.

   The forming of the coastline took millions of years of erosion.

   Careful forming of the sheet metal prevents cracks during later assembly.

   Similarshaping, formation, creation, molding

   Note

   The noun can be counted, and not only used for the process in general. Jeffrey K. Zeig's The Evolution of Psychotherapy (1987) writes of a creative person "whose specific formings of behavior are not easily predictable," where each forming is a separate act of shaping. The plural formings is what marks it as a true noun rather than a verb form.

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