papering

Pluralpaperings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of paper.

   Papering the nursery in soft yellow brightened the whole room.

   The crew finished papering the lobby before the gallery opened.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb, and each one takes a direct object. You can paper a lobby, a court, a wanted suspect's face across town, or a theater, where papering means filling the seats with complimentary tickets. After forms of be it is progressive (they were papering the hall). As a subject or after a preposition it is a gerund. When a countable noun is needed, the wallpaper sense takes over.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Patterned or plain paper used to cover and decorate the walls of a room.

   The old papering in the dining room was peeling at the corners.

   They chose a delicate floral papering for the front bedroom.

   Similarwallpaper

   Note

   The noun names the covering as it actually hangs on a wall, and it can be counted. Arnold Bennett, describing shelled houses in Over There (1915), saw "the different paperings of six rooms" laid open to view. Dickens, in The Haunted House (1859), has the papering of one wall drop down bodily with plaster still clinging to it. Use the plural paperings when several rooms or layers are in question.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A tactic by which a Public Defender's Office boycotts a judge, filing a request for a substitute judge in every case assigned to that judge.

   Faced with repeated severe sentences, the defense bar resorted to papering that judge.

   Critics argued that papering undermined the random assignment of cases.

   Note

   A courtroom term built on the verb's sense of filing papers with a court. The office papers a judge by lodging a peremptory challenge in every case assigned to that judge, which takes the judge off its whole caseload. It works as a mass noun (papering undermines random assignment) and as a gerund with the judge as object (papering that judge). It describes concerted action by an office, not one lawyer's single challenge.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3