ganging

Pluralgangings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of gang.

   Rival factions were ganging up against the newly appointed manager.

   Ganging together against the landlord, the tenants agreed to withhold rent.

   Note

   One spelling serves several verbs. In Scotland and Northern England, it is the participle of gang meaning "go" or "walk." In general English, it belongs to the transitive verb that joins similar items into a larger unit, and to the verb of banding together, most familiar as ganging up. Used as a gerund, it shades into the noun for forming a clique.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The forming of a gang or clique out of separate individuals.

   Sociologists traced the ganging of displaced youths to a lack of local opportunity.

   The rapid ganging of workers into competing factions split the union apart.

   Similargrouping, banding, clustering

   Note

   The noun most often comes with its particle, as the ganging up of several people against one. It is usually a mass noun, but it can be counted when the episodes are. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (1934), a man senses "gangings up against him." Without up, the word names the forming of the group itself and carries less hostility.

3. 3
   SayGAN-jing/ˈɡæn.d͡ʒɪŋ/

   nouncountable

   A short connecting line used to attach a fishhook to the main line, especially in commercial fishing.

   The deckhand checked every ganging before the longline went over the side.

   Worn gangings tend to snap under the weight of a large fish.

   Similarsnood, leader

   Note

   A longliner's word, usually heard in the plural, since one line carries hook after hook. George Brown Goode's The fisheries and fishery industries of the United States (1887) praises swivels that make gangings easy to adjust, which saves time in baiting and unhooking. Brenda Bishop Booma and Hugh Peabody Bishop's Marblehead's First Harbor (2011) counts 270 gangings and hooks on a half-mile tub of nine-foot rig.

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