pinning

Pluralpinnings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pin.

   The seamstress is pinning the fabric before she sews it.

   Pinning the blame on others rarely solves the problem.

   Note

   The -ing form serves every use of the verb: the dressmaker's pins, the chess player's pinned piece, an app icon kept in place, a security certificate fixed against change. The spelling doubles the n, as short verbs ending in one vowel and one consonant usually do. After be it builds the progressive (she is pinning the hem). Used as a noun, it becomes the noun for the act, which can take a plural, pinnings.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act or process of pinning something, in any sense of the verb.

   The pinning of the seams held the garment together while she stitched.

   In wrestling, a quick pinning ends the match immediately.

   Similarfastening

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A ceremony in which a pin badge is formally presented to someone.

   The fraternity held a pinning for its incoming members last spring.

   At the pinning, each cadet received a silver badge from the commander.

   Note

   Besides the formal awarding of a badge, the word names a step in courtship. In James A. Schnell's Case Studies in Culture and Communication (2003), a pinning is the moment a fraternity member gives his pin to his girlfriend to acknowledge preengagement. Schnell lists it alongside birthdays and engagements. For these occasions it is an ordinary countable noun with the plural pinnings.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The fixing of a particle into a definite quantum state, or of the occupation number of a system of particles.

   The pinning of the system's occupation number allowed precise predictions of its behavior.

   Researchers achieved pinning of the atom's quantum state using a laser trap.

   Note

   Physics borrows the everyday image here: something pinned is held fast instead of being left free to vary. The term works at two scales. For a single particle, pinning removes the superposition and leaves one definite quantum state. For a many-particle system, it fixes the occupation number, the count of particles in a given state. In this sense it usually appears as a mass noun, as in pinning of the occupation number.

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