perfecting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of perfect.

   He spent years perfecting his technique on the violin.

   The team is perfecting the new design before launch.

   Note

   The -ing form of the verb, so it keeps the verb's grammar. It takes a direct object, as in perfecting a technique, and follows be in progressive tenses. It also carries the verb's legal use, where perfecting a right means taking the step that secures it, usually filing a document in the correct venue. With of after it, the same spelling becomes the noun for the act.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of bringing something to a flawless or complete state.

   The perfecting of the manuscript required years of careful revision.

   Mastery, she argued, lies not in raw talent but in the slow perfecting of habit.

   Similarrefinement, polishing, honing, improvement

   Note

   In most use it is a mass noun followed by of: the perfecting of a manuscript, or of a habit. It can still take a plural when the refinements are counted one by one. R. A. Stradling's Philip IV and the Government of Spain (2002) speaks of "the final embellishments and perfectings of detail." Reserve the plural for separate finishing touches. For the overall effort, the singular is the natural choice.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The process of printing on both sides of a sheet during a single pass through the press.

   The shop chose a press capable of perfecting to speed up the print run.

   Perfecting let them produce the booklets in half the usual time.

   Note

   A printer's word, and nothing in it is being made flawless. Both sides of the sheet are printed in one pass, either as the paper travels through successive impression units or by turning it inside the press, so the sheet never needs a second feed. In shop talk it often names what a press can do, as in a press capable of perfecting. Keep it apart from the sense of making flawless.

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