planing

Pluralplanings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of plane.

   He spent the morning planing the rough boards smooth.

   Planing the warped door's edge finally stopped it from sticking.

   Note

   One spelling carries every verb sense of plane. The carpenter's sense takes an object: planing the boards. The other two take none: a boat planing as its bow lifts clear of the water, a bird planing on the wind. The silent e drops before -ing and leaves a single n. Doubled, it becomes planning, a different word entirely.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of shaving a surface flat and smooth, as when wood or another material is planed with a tool.

   A final planing removed the last ridges left by the saw.

   The repeated planing of the workbench gradually lowered its height.

   Similarsmoothing, shaving

   Note

   The noun counts: each round of work with the plane is a planing, and the plural is ordinary. James N. McKean and Mary Vanclay's Common Sense Instrument Care (1996) measures upkeep in the time between planings, from one year to several depending on the wood and how hard the instrument is played. Unlike the verb form, this noun takes its object through of: the planing of the workbench.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A movement of chords in parallel, where each one keeps the same interval structure while shifting up or down together.

   The pianist used planing to slide a string of identical chords up the keyboard.

   Much of the film score leans on planing to create a dreamy, drifting mood.

   Similarparallelism

   Note

   Here harmony works more like a color than a progression. Musicians call it real or exact planing when every interval is kept exactly. They call it diatonic planing when the chords stay within the key and their quality shifts along the way. Either kind breaks the classical ban on parallel fifths and octaves, and much of its floating sound comes from that.

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