marrying

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of marry.

   The couple announced they were marrying in the fall.

   He spent years avoiding marrying before finally settling down.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of the verb, with or without an object. Intransitively, a couple are marrying. Transitively, she is marrying him, a father is marrying his daughter to a neighbor, or an officiant is marrying the pair. Figuratively it means joining, as in marrying two flavors, with the phrasal marry up close by. After verbs like avoid it works as a gerund: avoiding marrying.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A marriage; the union of two people as spouses.

   Their marrying brought together two well-known families.

   The whole estate celebrated the marrying with a week of feasting.

   Similarmarriage, wedding, union, match

   Note

   A countable noun, so it takes a plural. Diana Wynne Jones writes of "marryings and intermarryings" in The Crown of Dalemark (2003), treating each wedding as a separate link in a chain of family alliances. That plural is what sets it apart from the gerund, which names the act itself and does not pluralize. Where marriage or wedding would be the usual choice, this noun keeps the feel of something being done.

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