graving

Pluralgravings

1. 1
   verbobsolete

   Present participle and gerund of grave. The verb is now rare.

   Note

   Every verb meaning behind this form is now obsolete: to dig, to carve or engrave, to shape with a chisel, to fix something indelibly in the mind, to bury. So the participle belongs mainly to older prose, where it can describe any of these actions in progress. The same spelling also serves as a noun, both for cleaning a ship's bottom and for an engraving, so the sentence has to tell you which one you are reading.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of cleaning the bottom of a ship's hull, often scraping off growth and sealing the timber with a protective coating.

   The graving of the old frigate revealed timbers thick with barnacles and weed.

   Yard workers scheduled a graving for every merchant ship returning from tropical waters.

   Similarcareening

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   An engraving: a design, image, or inscription cut into a hard surface such as metal, wood, or stone, or a print taken from it.

   Each plate in the antiquarian's folio was a graving of a Roman coin, rendered in exquisite line.

   And the work itself of the bases, was intergraven: and there were gravings between the joinings.

   1610, Douay–Rheims Bible, 3 Kings vii. 28

   Note

   An old word that has given way entirely to engraving. The Douay–Rheims Bible of 1610 uses it for ornament cut into the bases it describes: "there were gravings between the joinings," alongside the verb intergraven. Its plural is gravings. In present-day writing, use engraving, and keep graving for quoting older texts or for a deliberately antique voice.

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