phasing

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The progression of something through successive phases, or the way a sequence or cycle is arranged.

   Like the moon moving through its phases, each stage following the last in a fixed cycle.

   The project's phasing allowed each team to finish its part before the next began.

   Poor phasing of the signals left cars idling at empty intersections.

   Similarstaging, sequencing, timing, scheduling

   Note

   A noun in its own right rather than a verb in disguise: it takes a plural, phasings, and sits comfortably after an article or possessive, as in the phasing or the project's phasing. That is the quickest test against the verb's -ing form, which takes an object or a particle instead. Phasing out the old system is the verb at work; the phasing of the system is the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of phase.

   The hospital is phasing in electronic records department by department.

   Regulators are phasing out single-use plastics over the next decade.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty: it is the progressive participle after be (they are phasing out the old fleet) and the gerund (phasing in new rules took a year). It almost always travels with a particle: in for starting gradually, out for stopping gradually. Used for fazing (nothing seems to be phasing her), it borrows the faze meaning, a spelling widely treated as an error. Write fazing instead.

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