grassing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of grass.

   The highway department is grassing the new median strips this fall.

   Volunteers spent the weekend grassing the school's playing field.

   Note

   One form serves every sense of the verb, from turfing a verge to informing on criminals, where grassing is slang for betraying someone to the authorities. As a gerund it shades into the noun for turfing land: the grassing of a paddock names the same act, but only the true noun takes a plural, grassings. The object tells the senses apart: a field is grassed, an opponent grassed, flax grassed for bleaching.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The covering of an area of land with grass.

   The grassing of the football field took nearly two weeks.

   After the grassing of the slopes, the hillside turned green again.

   Similarseeding

3. 3
   nounhistoricaluncountable

   An area of grassland kept as pasture for grazing cattle.

   The farmer rented good grassing for his herd that summer.

   Each spring the cattle were driven up to the upland grassing.

   Similarpasture, grazing, pasturage

   Note

   A word from older farming that treats grazing as a resource: land you could put cattle on. It belongs to historical writing, so it suits accounts of past agriculture better than descriptions of a modern farm. It works as a mass noun, as in good grassing for the herd, and as a count noun for one particular stretch of pasture.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The laying out of linen on open fields so that air and sunlight bleach it white.

   The grassing of fine linen was best done in the long days of early summer.

   Bleachers relied on grassing to whiten the woven cloth before it went to market.

   Similarbleaching

   Note

   A bleacher's term that could be counted like any other step in finishing cloth. The Textile Colourist (1876) lists grassings alongside boilings and immersions in bleaching liquor, so a single batch might go through several rounds. Used as a mass noun, it names the practice. In the plural, it names the separate times the cloth was laid out.

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