lingering

Plurallingerings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of linger.

   A faint smell of smoke was lingering in the kitchen hours after the fire went out.

   Lingering over the menu, the diners debated each dish at length.

   Note

   The verb form behind both the progressive (smoke was lingering in the kitchen) and the opening participle clause (Lingering over the menu, the diners…). It carries each meaning of linger: staying on reluctantly, fading slowly toward death or extinction, and dwelling on a subject. That last use usually takes over. Because the verb takes no object, a noun never follows it directly.

2. 2
   noun

   Gerund of linger: an act of loitering or waiting.

   The constant lingering of customers past closing time frustrated the staff.

   His lingering over each goodbye showed how reluctant he was to leave.

   Note

   A countable noun built on the verb, so it takes a plural: lingerings. The one who lingers attaches with of (the lingering of customers), and what is dwelt on attaches with over (his lingering over each goodbye). David S. Reynolds sets Whitman's "lingerings" beside "pauses" and "interruptions". That shows the word's natural company: hesitations within a rhythm, not only people slow to leave a room.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A remnant; something that remains or persists after the rest has gone or faded.

   Like the glow that stays in the sky after the sun has set.

   In the closing pages, a lingering of the original hope still colors the narrator's voice.

   The cold soup left a faint lingering of garlic on the tongue.

   Similartrace, remnant, vestige, hint, residue

   Note

   Here the noun names what is left behind rather than the act of staying: the faint trace of a quality or feeling. Washington Irving writes of "the lingerings of decent pride" in a poor widow's clean dress. Dickens, in Bleak House, writes of "little lingerings" revived in a narrator's mind. Both writers reach for the plural and for something faint and inward, which is where this sense sounds most natural.

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