looping

Pluralloopings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of loop.

   The video was looping silently on the lobby screen.

   He spent the afternoon looping ribbon through the gift boxes.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After a form of be it makes the progressive (the clip is looping), and as a gerund it names the activity itself (looping the cable took an hour). Loop usually takes an object, such as ribbon, an aircraft, a song or an electrical circuit, though a video can simply be looping on its own. Once it takes a plural, loopings, it has become the noun for a looped pattern.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A curving pattern or repeated action that bends back on itself.

   Like the spiraling path a paper airplane traces before it lands.

   The signature ended with an elaborate looping beneath his name.

   The trail's repeated loopings made the walk feel longer than it was.

   Similarcurl, swirl, flourish, twist, winding

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The practice of keeping a teacher with the same group of students across more than one school year.

   Like keeping the same family doctor over many years, who already knows your history.

   The district adopted looping for its elementary grades to build stronger teacher-student bonds.

   Critics of looping worry that a poor match between a teacher and a class lasts twice as long.

   Note

   Education uses the word as the name of a policy, so it usually appears as a mass noun: a district adopts looping or experiments with looping. The class stays put with its teacher instead of being handed on each year. Its appeal and its risk are the same fact: continuity holds whether the match between teacher and class is a good one or a poor one.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The running together of ore into a single mass when it is heated only for calcination.

   Like wet rice grains clumping into a single sticky mass.

   The furnace operator watched for looping as the ore was calcined at low heat.

   Excessive looping in the charge made the calcined ore difficult to break apart.

   Note

   A furnace word that only looks like its neighbors. It comes from a separate root, comparable to Dutch loopen, "to run", which is why the ore is said to run together. It has nothing to do with loops or curves. The fault it names happens below smelting heat, when a charge meant only for calcination softens and clumps into a mass instead.

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