gazing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of gaze.

   Gazing across the valley, she felt completely at peace.

   He kept gazing at the old photograph without saying a word.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it builds progressive tenses (she was gazing) and opening phrases (gazing across the valley). As a gerund it names the action itself (gazing calms him). The verb is normally intransitive, so it needs a preposition: gazing at, into, across. Leaving the preposition out and gazing a thing directly is a poetic transitive use, not everyday English.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of looking long and steadily at something or someone.

   His gazing at the horizon betrayed a deep restlessness.

   The prolonged gazing between the two strangers grew awkward.

   Similarstaring

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, this is a full noun: it takes articles and adjectives, and it can even be plural. Francis Egerton, Earl of Ellesmere, rhymes on "gazings which the gazer often rues" in Town and Country (1836). It also forms compounds that name what is looked at, such as window-gazing, which Paul Bigland uses in RAIL (2022) for watching scenery from a train.

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