icing

Pluralicings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   A sweet, thick glaze made mostly of sugar, often mixed with butter, egg whites, or flavorings, used to coat baked goods.

   The baker piped buttercream icing around the edge of the wedding cake.

   He licked the leftover icing off the spoon while the cupcakes cooled.

   Similarfrosting

   Note

   Named for the action: icing is the gerund of the verb ice, which also means to cover a cake this way, so you ice a cake with icing. Frosting is its synonym. It is usually a mass noun (too much icing), but it can be counted for kinds. Janet McKenzie Hill's Cakes, Pastry and Dessert Dishes (1917) speaks of "many of the icings" of the light, fluffy sort, beaten as syrup is added very slowly.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A minor ice hockey infraction called when a player shoots the puck from behind the center red line and it crosses the opponent's goal line untouched.

   The linesman waved off the icing because a defender could have played the puck first.

   Late in the game, repeated icing calls kept pinning the tired team in their own zone.

   Note

   A rink word with its own verb: to ice the puck is to send it the length of the playing surface and stop play. Play restarts with a faceoff in the offending team's zone, which is why repeated icing calls keep a tired team pinned back. Being short-handed is the one exemption, because a team down a player is not penalized for it.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The build-up of a layer of ice on a surface.

   The icing of the power lines led to several outages during the storm.

   Workers cleared the icing from the rooftop before it could damage the gutters.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of ice.

   The chef is icing the wedding cake with delicate swirls.

   Icing the sprained ankle quickly helped reduce the swelling.

   Note

   The verb form carries every sense of ice, so context decides which one is meant: a chef is icing a cake, a trainer is icing an ankle, a pond is icing in the cold. As a gerund it takes a direct object (icing the cake takes patience). The noun takes a determiner or of instead (the icing of the wings), and that is the quickest way to tell the two apart.

5. 5
   noununcountable

   Weather conditions that lead to ice forming on the surfaces of an aircraft.

   Forecasters warned of severe icing above ten thousand feet that afternoon.

   The crew activated the anti-ice system as soon as icing appeared on the wings.

   Note

   Pilots and forecasters grade this hazard and place it in the sky. Icing is moderate or severe, and it lies at particular altitudes and cloud layers, as in reports of moderate icing between 13,000 and 4,000 feet. Supercooled droplets freeze on the airframe and degrade its performance. Unlike the plain build-up of ice, it names the weather that causes the ice, not the ice that has already formed.

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