lighting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The equipment used to provide illumination, or the illumination that the equipment provides.

   The theater's lighting shifted from warm amber to cool blue as the scene changed.

   The lighting design for the concert took months to plan.

   Similarlight, illumination

   Note

   The everyday sense, built simply from light plus -ing. It often carries a word for its source in front of it: gas lighting, acetylene lighting, electric lighting. The Railway Magazine of April 1951 reports a station's acetylene gas lighting being replaced by electric lighting. In that single sentence the word covers both the fittings and the light they give, so the reader rarely needs to separate the two.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of switching on lamps or other illumination equipment, or of igniting a flame.

   The ceremony opened with the lighting of the memorial torch.

   Automatic sensors now handle the lighting of the stadium's floodlamps each evening.

   Similarignition, kindling

   Note

   Here the word names an event rather than a fixture, so it counts easily. Andrew Pessin's Uncommon Sense (2012) sets "strikings followed by lightings" side by side, one lighting for each struck match. That countable use is a quick way to tell it from the equipment-and-glow sense: a lighting is one act. In ceremonies the usual frame is "the lighting of" plus the thing lit, such as a torch, a candle or a beacon.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of light.

   The crew was lighting the stage for the evening performance.

   Lighting the furnace each morning was the apprentice's first duty.

   Note

   The verb form does two jobs: progressive (was lighting the stage) and gerund (lighting the furnace took a moment). As a gerund it takes a direct object, while the noun for the act takes of: lighting the torch versus the lighting of the torch. It also carries every sense of light, including the intransitive "take fire" and making a bonus available by hitting a target.

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