occurring

Pluraloccurrings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of occur.

   Earthquakes occurring along the fault line alarmed nearby towns.

   Delays were occurring more often as the equipment aged.

   Note

   The everyday form behind progressives and verbal nouns: delays were occurring, the risk of a fault occurring. Because occur is intransitive, no object follows it. What follows is a place, a time, or, in the 'come to mind' meaning, to plus a person, as in it kept occurring to her. The final r doubles before -ing, just as it does in occurred.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Happening or existing in a particular manner, as shown by a preceding modifier such as 'naturally' or 'rarely'.

   Naturally occurring isotopes make up most of the sample.

   Researchers cataloged the rarely occurring weather patterns over the decade.

   Note

   An adjective that never stands alone. It needs an adverb in front, and the pair works as a single modifier: naturally occurring macromolecules, rarely occurring patterns. Because the first word ends in -ly, the compound is written open, with no hyphen. It does not compare, so any sense of degree belongs to the adverb rather than to occurring itself.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An event or happening; a single instance of something taking place.

   Similaroccurrence

   Note

   A noun for the happening itself, still in motion, rather than the finished event. It belongs to philosophical and theological prose. J. R. T. M. Peters (1976) sets the occurring of an act against its non-occurring, and Janet Banfield (2016) writes of the occurrings and implyings of the past. It takes a plural. In ordinary writing, occurrence is the word to use.

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