outraging

Pluraloutragings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of outrage.

   The court's decision is outraging citizens across the country.

   Outraging her loyal supporters proved to be a costly mistake.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After be it builds the progressive (is outraging citizens), and on its own it works as a noun phrase (Outraging her supporters was a mistake). Because the verb is transitive, both uses take a direct object. That object is the test against the archaic noun, which takes of instead and can be plural: the outraging of the temple, many outragings. Older texts may also carry the verb's archaic meaning of sexual violation.

2. 2
   nounarchaic

   The carrying out of a violent, cruel, or deeply offensive act.

   The outraging of the temple was recorded in the town's oldest chronicles.

   Many were the outragings and insultings of the Indians upon the English while Sir Edmund Andros was Governor.

   1689, Thomas Smith, diary

   Note

   A noun now found mainly in older prose, and one that readily took a plural. Thomas Smith's diary of 1689 records that "many were the outragings and insultings" under Governor Sir Edmund Andros, with one verbal noun stacked on another. Today the plain noun outrage, or outrages, does this work. Keep outraging for historical or deliberately period writing.

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