inching

Pluralinchings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of inch.

   The climbers were inching along the narrow ledge above the gorge.

   Prices have been inching upward throughout the year.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "were inching along" it builds the progressive, and in "inching forward took an hour" it serves as a noun. It usually wants a direction word, such as along, upward or closer, because the verb describes slow advance toward somewhere. It can also take an object (inching the car forward) or mean doling something out sparingly, and in Hong Kong colloquial English it means trading cheeky insults.

2. 2
   noun

   Very slow, gradual movement that progresses in tiny steps.

   The steady inching of the traffic finally got them onto the highway.

   An almost imperceptible inching of the dial showed the pressure was still rising.

   Similarcrawl, creep

   Note

   Unlike the gerund inside the verb form, this noun can be counted: each small advance is an inching, and a run of them is inchings. Francis Lynde's Empire Builders has a fuse-trailing pole moving "by slow inchings," and the plural makes the creeping feel stepwise, one halting gain after another. After by, the noun describes the manner of a movement rather than its distance.

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