pasting

Pluralpastings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of paste.

   She spent the afternoon copying and pasting figures from one spreadsheet into another.

   By the sixth inning, the Yankees were pasting the Red Sox 11 to 2.

   Note

   The -ing form runs across every use of the verb: sticking with paste, inserting copied text or images, and, in slang, beating or trouncing someone. Copying and pasting is the everyday pair at a keyboard. The final e of paste drops before -ing, and when the form names the act itself it overlaps with the noun for applying paste.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of spreading paste on something, or of fixing something in place with paste.

   After the pasting, the collage had to dry flat under a stack of heavy books.

   The pasting of handbills on utility poles is against city rules.

   Similargluing

3. 3
   nounslangcountable

   A defeat, or a physical beating.

   The governor's party took a pasting in the midterm elections.

   The champion gave the challenger such a pasting that the referee stopped the fight early.

   Similarbeating, thrashing, hammering, drubbing, trouncing

   Note

   The slang noun carries a sense of scale: a pasting is not a narrow loss but a heavy, one-sided one, the noun for what the verb paste means in slang. The loser takes a pasting and the winner gives one. It is lively in speech and sports talk; in formal writing, a heavy defeat or a beating says the same thing more soberly.

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