pointing

Pluralpointings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of point.

   The guide was pointing out landmarks along the river as we drifted past.

   Stop pointing at the screen and tell me what you mean.

   Note

   The verb form shares its spelling with every noun on this page, so context does the sorting. After be it is a participle (she was pointing at the map). Standing alone as a subject or object, it is a gerund (pointing is rude). The verb also carries meanings that none of the nouns here have: aiming, sharpening to an end, and signaling a probability (everything is pointing to a late finish).

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of directing attention to something by extending a finger or object toward it.

   Her constant pointing across the room made everyone turn to look.

   A quick bit of pointing was enough to send the hikers down the correct trail.

   Note

   The base noun, built simply from point and -ing. Usually it names the gesture itself, but it can also take a plural. Coleman Roberts Griffith, in Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning (1939), writes of "pointings or signifyings," treating each act of indicating as a countable unit of meaning. That plural has a technical ring. For the everyday gesture, the uncountable use is the natural choice.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The filling of the joints between bricks or stones with mortar.

   Good pointing keeps rain from soaking into the brickwork.

   They finished the pointing along the lower courses before the frost arrived.

4. 4
   nouncollectivecountable or uncountable

   The mortar placed between bricks to fill the gap.

   Weather had eaten away the pointing, leaving deep grooves in the wall.

   Fresh pointing gave the old facade a crisp, finished look.

   Note

   Here the word names the material rather than the work: the mortar itself, as opposed to the act of filling the joints. Some careful users object to this use and keep pointing for the job alone. When it does mean the material, it usually stays singular or collective, as in "the pointing has crumbled." If precision matters, call the stuff mortar and the task pointing.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The practice or art of supplying a text with punctuation marks.

   The editor's light pointing kept the prose flowing without too many commas.

   Inconsistent pointing made the manuscript hard to follow.

   Similarpunctuation

6. 6
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The set of vowel marks added to Hebrew consonantal script to indicate vowels; also called nikud.

   Students rely on the pointing until they can read unvocalized text.

   The scribe added the pointing only after the consonants were complete.

   Similarnikud

   Note

   Hebrew's vowel marks under an English name. Nikud and pointing refer to the same thing. In scholarly writing the word often follows the name of a particular system. Alexander Beider's Origins of Yiddish Dialects (2015) gives Hebrew spellings "according to the Tiberian pointing." With an article and a system name in front of it, pointing means a tradition of vowel marking, not punctuation.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The practice of placing marks in a text, usually a psalm, to show which syllables the chant advances on and where pauses occur.

   Without consistent pointing, the verses fell apart whenever the choir tried to chant them.

   She spent the afternoon on the pointing for next Sunday's canticle.

   Note

   Church music's version of punctuation, and close kin to the sense meaning punctuating. The marks tell singers on which syllable the chant moves to its next note and where it pauses. In this use the word is uncountable and names the practice or craft, as in "the pointing of the psalms." For one particular worked-out set of marks, English switches to the countable noun.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   A specific arrangement of the metrical chant marks worked out for one particular psalm or text.

   Our choir adopted the older pointing because the cadences felt more natural.

   Two rival pointings of the canticle appear side by side in this edition.

   Note

   The countable side of chant marking, and the one that takes a plural. Psalm pointings sometimes differ between psalters, so a choir may find the same psalm marked in two different ways. That is why the word so often comes with a determiner, as in "this pointing" or "the older pointing": it picks out one arrangement among rivals.

9. 9
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A method of copying a sculptor's model into stone by measuring set points on the model and transferring those depths to the marble block.

   The workshop relied on pointing to turn the plaster cast into a marble figure.

   Through careful pointing, the carvers reproduced every fold of the original drapery.

   Note

   A sculptor's term with two layers. Strictly, it is the measuring: working out, at set distances from the surface of a marble block, where the surface of the finished statue will lie. More loosely, it covers the whole process of cutting a statue from the artist's model. Either way, the word links two objects, the model and the block, with measurements taken from one and carried to the other.

10. 10
    nouncountable or uncountable

    The removal of the pointed tip of wheat grains during the first stage of high milling.

    Thorough pointing leaves the kernels clean before they reach the rollers.

    The miller checked that pointing had stripped the tips evenly across the batch.

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