marching

Pluralmarchings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of march.

   The band was marching down the main avenue as the crowd cheered.

   Marching in step requires every soldier to match the same pace.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (the band was marching), and at the head of a phrase it works as a noun (marching in step is hard). Either job can carry any meaning of march: walking in step, forcing someone to walk (marching prisoners away), steady progress, or even sharing a border. When it names the activity outright, it shades into the noun for the activity.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The activity of moving forward with regular, measured steps, especially in a group such as soldiers or demonstrators.

   Marching in the summer heat drained the new cadets quickly.

   The protest involved a full day of marching before the rally began.

   Note

   The noun counts as well as naming an activity: marchings are separate movements or episodes. Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837) pairs "the marchings and retreatings" of an armed body, and the War Department's 1917 infantry manual lists "all steps and marchings" as drill movements, each begun on the left foot. Reach for the plural when you mean distinct maneuvers; keep the singular for the activity itself.

3. 3
   adjective

   Moving in a steady, ordered way, as a body of soldiers or a procession does.

   The marching band kept perfect time through every turn.

   A marching regiment passed beneath the city gates at dawn.

4. 4
   adjective

   Arranged in a line or lines that bring to mind a column of soldiers moving in formation.

   Marching rows of vineyards covered the hillside in neat parallel bands.

   The garden's marching hedges drew the eye toward the distant fountain.

   Similarserried, regimented, orderly

   Note

   Here nothing actually moves; the procession is only in the eye. Colin Thiele's The Sun on the Stubble (1961) sets "the marching fences" among trees, stumps and grazing sheep, lines that seem to stride away across the land. The word suits anything set in long rows, such as fences, hedges or vines, and it differs from the literal adjective because the soldiers are a picture, not a fact.

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