lowering

Plurallowerings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of lower.

   Workers were lowering the steel beam carefully toward the foundation.

   Lowering the dosage gradually helped reduce the side effects.

   Note

   The participle of lower in its everyday working senses: letting down, pulling down, reducing height or degree. You lower a beam or a dosage, so the verb nearly always takes an object. The same spelling belongs to an unrelated word. The dark-and-menacing adjective comes from lour, not low. So F. G. Roe's "lowering smoke-screen of Leeds" (1949) hangs over the land threateningly rather than coming down.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of moving or letting something down to a lower position.

   The lowering of the flag marked the end of the ceremony.

   A sudden lowering of the platform startled the workers below.

   Similardescent, drop, dropping

   Oppositeraising, hoisting, lifting

   Note

   A noun built on a verb that was itself built on a comparative. Lower, "more low," became a verb around 1600, first meaning "sink." From the 1650s it also meant "let down." Before that, the older verb low did the transitive job. The noun usually takes of (the lowering of the flag). It also has a plural, lowerings, for repeated or separate acts.

3. 3
   adjective

   Dark and menacing in appearance, like a sky heavy with storm clouds.

   Sailors watched the lowering horizon with growing unease.

   A lowering gloom settled over the valley before the gale struck.

   Similarthreatening, gloomy

   Oppositebright, clear, sunny

   Note

   Weather is where this adjective most often lives: a lowering sky, lowering clouds, a prospect "grey and lowering." It works before a noun or after a linking verb. It descends from Middle English louryng, from lour plus -ing, and is akin to Dutch loerend, "lurking, louring." Its kin are gloomy and threatening. The sky is not coming down; it is scowling.

4. 4
   adjective

   Frowning or scowling, with a sullen and angry expression.

   The teacher's lowering brow warned the class to settle down.

   He sat in the corner all evening with a lowering scowl.

   Similarfrowning, scowling, sullen, gloomy, glowering

   Oppositesmiling, cheerful, beaming

   Note

   The face-reading use, paired with brows, a countenance, a look. It is fully gradable, as in Taylor Caldwell's "His face became more lowering." That gives a quick test for telling it from the participle of lower. It keeps company with scowling, sullen and glowering. It can also describe the mood of a group, as in Robert Barr's "lowering, suspicious men-at-arms."

5. 5
   adjective

   Lurking or skulking nearby in a threatening manner.

   A lowering presence seemed to follow them through the alleys.

   Wolves kept a lowering watch at the edge of the firelight.

   Similarmenacing, threatening, brooding

   Note

   Here the menace sits in a figure rather than a sky or a face. The Saturday Evening Post (1906) has "three grimy and lowering men," and a 1976 review describes "the powerful, lowering figures of Odin or Thor." The lurking shade stays close to the word's roots: the Dutch cognate loerend means "lurking," part of the origin traced under the stormy-sky meaning.

6. 6
   USLOW-ur-ing/ˈlaʊ.ɚ.ɪŋ/UKUKLOW-uh-ring/ˈlaʊ.ə.ɹɪŋ/US

   noun

   Alternative form of louring.

   Note

   A spelling variant: the noun of lour, meaning the act of looking dark or frowning, written as though it came from lower. On the page it is identical to the act of letting something down, so "a lowering" on its own can be ambiguous. Choosing the spelling louring removes the doubt when gloom, not descent, is meant.

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