massing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of bringing many separate things together into a single mass or grouping.

   Like iron filings drawn together by a magnet into a single clump.

   The massing of troops along the border alarmed neighboring states.

   Photographers captured the massing of thousands of starlings at dusk.

   Similargathering, concentration, buildup, assembly, accumulation

   Oppositedispersal, scattering

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, this noun can be counted and made plural, and the plural tends to name the gathered result rather than the act of gathering. Roberta Smith, writing in New York in 2009, describes Jason Rhodes's "idiosyncratic massings of objects and material goods," meaning accumulations an artist has built. It usually takes of: a massing of troops, massings of objects.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of mass.

   Protesters were massing in the square as the speech began.

   Dark thunderheads were massing along the coastline all afternoon.

   Note

   The -ing form of a verb that works both ways. Crowds mass in a square, and a general masses troops at a border, so massing can take an object or stand alone. The same spelling also serves as the gerund and as the countable noun, which has a plural, massings. A long-obsolete verb meaning to celebrate Mass once shared this form too.

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