mortgaging

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mortgage.

   By mortgaging the property, the couple freed up enough cash to launch their store.

   The struggling firm kept mortgaging its remaining assets to cover monthly payroll.

   Note

   The -ing form carries both of the verb's uses. Literally, its object is a property: mortgaging the house, mortgaging the farm. Figuratively, it pledges something less tangible, buying an immediate result with a long-term cost. Either way the verb is transitive, so the form needs a direct object. That is what separates the gerund (by mortgaging the farm) from the noun for the act (the mortgaging of the farm).

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of pledging property as security for a loan.

   The mortgaging of the estate raised enough cash to settle the family's debts.

   Repeated mortgaging of the farmland left them with very little equity.

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, the noun can be counted, and each mortgaging is a separate pledge. Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (1915) piles them up, imagining that Edward's concealments might require "more mortgagings, more pawnings of bracelets." That plural is the surest sign you are dealing with the noun. The gerund names the activity itself and never takes an -s.

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