nerving

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of nerve.

   She was nerving herself for the difficult conversation ahead.

   He kept nerving himself to ask his boss for a raise.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "was nerving herself" it builds the progressive, and as a gerund it names the act itself. The verb is transitive, so it almost always takes an object, often a reflexive one: nerving oneself for a hard task. Don't confuse it with the botanical noun, which shares the spelling but is a true noun with a plural, nervings.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The arrangement of veins, or nerves, running through a plant or its leaves.

   Like the branching network of roads that spreads across a region on a map.

   Botanists distinguish many species partly by the nerving of their leaves.

   The fossil's preserved nerving revealed how the ancient fern channeled water.

   Similarvenation

   Note

   Botany borrows the body's word here. A leaf's veins are also called its nerves, and the whole pattern they make is its nerving, close in meaning to venation. The pattern matters in classification, because the layout of veins helps tell one species from another. It usually comes with "of" and the organ it describes: the nerving of a leaf.

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