lamping

1. 1
   nounIrelandUKuncountable

   Hunting carried out at night, using bright lamps to dazzle the prey or to attract insects within reach for capture.

   Lamping for foxes was once a common way to control predators on the estate.

   The gamekeeper preferred lamping after midnight, when the rabbits were easiest to spot.

   Similarjacklighting

   Note

   This is a hunting word of the UK and Ireland, built from lamp plus -ing: the light names the method. As a noun it is uncountable, so it takes no plural. People go lamping; they do not go on a lamping. It is spelled exactly like the verb's -ing form, so "they were lamping" and "lamping is common here" use one word in two grammatical roles.

2. 2
   verbUKIreland

   Present participle of lamp.

   By ten o'clock they were lamping along the river for rats.

   Lamping the lower paddocks took most of the night.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of the verb lamp, and those meanings lie far apart. In UK and Irish hunting talk it means using a lamp at night. In UK slang, lamping someone means hitting them. In US slang, lamping means hanging out and doing nothing much. Lamping a vase or urn means turning it into a table lamp. Context and region decide which meaning applies.

3. 3
   adjectivearchaic

   Shining brightly; glittering or flashing with brilliant light.

   The dragon fixed them with its lamping golden eyes.

   Torches threw a lamping glow across the banquet tables.

   Note

   An old poetic adjective that makes anything shining into a lamp. Edmund Spenser uses it in The Faerie Queene (1590), where a sacred fire burns among "th'eternall spheres and lamping sky." It does not grade: nothing is more lamping than something else. Used today, it signals deliberate archaism. It suits verse, fantasy and pastiche, not everyday descriptions of brightness.

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