marring

Pluralmarrings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mar.

   Constant interruptions were marring an otherwise productive meeting.

   Graffiti marring the ancient stone walls dismayed the historians.

   Note

   A transitive verb's -ing form, so it wants an object after it: marring a view, marring a record. It also builds compound adjectives with the object placed in front, as in the "merchant-marring rocks" of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which are rocks that ruin merchants. Such compounds are hyphenated before a noun. The same spelling also serves as the noun for a blemish.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A blemish or flaw that spoils the appearance or quality of something.

   A single marring across the polished surface ruined its flawless look.

   Collectors reject any coin that shows even slight marring on its face.

   Similarblemish, flaw, imperfection, damage, defect

   Note

   Built from mar plus -ing, this noun names the damage left behind rather than the act of causing it. Unlike the gerund, it takes a plural: Samuel R. Delany's Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985) calls writing a smuggler cannot read "marrings to be overlooked." To tell the two apart, try a or -s: a marring and two marrings point to the blemish, while the marring of the walls points to the verb's gerund.

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