porting

Pluralportings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of port.

   Developers spent the year porting their engine to mobile platforms.

   Porting legacy code to the new system uncovered dozens of hidden bugs.

   Note

   Which port is meant depends on the object: a helm, a weapon, a cargo, a program, a telephone number. As a gerund it heads noun phrases (the porting of old code). As a participle it builds progressives. With phone numbers the verb runs either way: a provider is porting your number, or the number itself is porting. Do not confuse the gerund with the countable engineering noun, which takes a plural.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A hole or channel that admits fluid or other material, or lets it pass through.

   Fuel enters the cylinder through a precisely shaped porting in the head.

   Engineers widened the porting to let coolant flow more freely.

   Similaropening, passage, inlet

   Note

   An engineer's noun, at home in valve and housing design. The SAE Technical Paper Series of 1961 arranges "six equally spaced portings" around a control sleeve, and the 1962 Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office speaks of "inlet and outlet portings." Unlike the gerund, it counts: a porting, two portings. It is sized, spaced and positioned like any machined feature.

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