# laddering

Pronunciation: say "LAD-er-ing" US /ˈlæd.əɹ.ɪŋ/, UK /ˈlad.əɹ.ɪŋ/

## Verb

1. Present participle and gerund of ladder. — present participle and gerund of ladder
   - Simple: The -ing form of ladder. Use it after am, is, are, was or were, or to name the action.
   - _Retirees are increasingly laddering Treasury bonds to manage interest-rate risk._
   - _Laddering bond maturities lets investors reinvest at regular intervals._

## Noun

2. An investing approach that spreads money across multiple bonds or term deposits with staggered, rolling maturity dates.
   - Simple: A way to invest money by splitting it across savings or bonds that pay out at different times.
   - _The advisor recommended laddering so that a portion of the portfolio matured every year._
   - _By choosing laddering, the couple avoided locking all their cash into a single maturity date._
3. An interview method, developed in the 1960s, in which the questioner drills down for greater detail at each successive step.
   - Simple: A way of asking questions where you keep digging for more detail with each answer.
   - _Through careful laddering, the moderator uncovered the deeper values behind each purchase decision._
   - _The market researcher relied on laddering to move from product features to personal motivations._
4. A method of soil compaction used to break up clods and level a field.
   - Simple: A way of pressing down soil to break up lumps and make a field flat.
   - _The heavy ground needed two plowings and three ladderings before the clods broke down and the field lay level._
   - _Before sowing, the crew finished a final laddering to level the seedbed._
5. A regular pattern of DNA fragment sizes appearing on an electrophoresis gel, produced when dying cells break their DNA into pieces.
   - Simple: A regular pattern of DNA pieces seen on a test gel when a cell is dying.
   - _The presence of laddering confirmed that the cells had undergone programmed death rather than injury._
   - _Researchers look for laddering when they want evidence of apoptosis in a sample._
6. An irregular pattern of cracks that develops when a material dries unevenly.
   - Simple: An uneven set of cracks that forms when something dries out at different rates.
   - _Uneven drying left visible laddering across the slab of clay._
   - _The restorer found laddering in the old paint where the surface had dried inconsistently._

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/laddering (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).