lording

Plurallordings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of lord.

   The manager was lording his authority over the new interns.

   Stop lording your wealth over people who have less than you.

   Note

   Both meanings of the verb pass through this form. Most often it carries the domineering sense, usually built with over and the person on the receiving end: lording his authority over the interns. Less often it means conferring a lord's title, a transitive use with the new lord as object. As a gerund it names the behavior itself, as in the constant lording that wore everyone down.

2. 2
   nounarchaic

   A nobleman holding the rank or title of lord.

   The lording summoned his tenants to settle the year's rents.

   How now my Lords of Egypt & Zenocrate? Now muſt your iewels be reſtor’d againe: And I that triumpht ſo be ouercome. How ſay you Lordings, Is not this your hope?

   c. 1587, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. The First Part

   Note

   An old word of address as much as of description. In Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587–1588), a speaker turns to the lords of Egypt with "How say you, lordings?" Today it belongs only to writing that deliberately evokes that older courtly voice. In modern prose a reader will more readily take lording as the participle of "to lord", so the surrounding words must make the noun unmistakable.

3. 3
   nounobsolete

   A minor or petty lord; a lordling of small consequence.

   The aging lording clung to his modest title and tiny holdings.

   Several lordings quarreled over a patch of disputed farmland.

   Note

   The small-scale counterpart of the archaic "lord" meaning, and now entirely out of use. A writer who wants a little or petty lord today reaches for lordling, which carries the same idea without ambiguity. Used in this sense now, lording would simply be read as the plain noun for a lord, or as the verb form, so the diminutive force would be lost on the reader.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3