posing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pose.

   He spent the afternoon posing for the portrait painter.

   Posing by the monument, the tourists smiled for the camera.

   Note

   One spelling, many jobs: the silent e of pose drops before -ing, and the result carries every sense of the verb. Transitively it takes an object, as in posing a riddle or posing a serious risk. Intransitively it stands alone or takes for, as in posing for a portrait. The same form also works as a noun, the act of striking a posture, and as a gradable adjective: more posing, most posing.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act performed by someone who holds a position for a picture or who strikes an affected posture.

   Her constant posing for the camera annoyed the rest of the group.

   The sculptor admired the model's patient posing throughout the long session.

   Similarposturing, modeling

   Note

   Used in the plural, the noun counts a run of performances rather than one sitting. Norman W. Provizer, in Analyzing the Third World (1978), writes of Nkrumah's posings as a national chief, which the elite did not take seriously. With as, it names the role being put on. The plural suggests repeated display, and it edges toward the sense of outright pretense.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialuncountable

   The act of presenting oneself in a false way, often to seem more impressive or to blend in with a group; pretense.

   Like a peacock fanning its tail just to look bigger than it really is.

   Their endless posing about loving art hid the fact they'd never visited a museum.

   The interview revealed that his confidence was mostly posing.

   Similarpretense, posturing, affectation, pretension, fakery

   Oppositesincerity

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act by which something is put into a chosen position or arrangement.

   The posing of the mannequins in the window display drew shoppers' attention.

   Proper posing of each object is essential before the shutter clicks.

   Similararrangement, placement, positioning

   Note

   Mannequins and props are not the only things that get posed. The noun follows the verb's sense of asking, so a question or a problem can have its posing too. It is countable: different posings of essentially the same question are different ways of framing it. Read it that way in the phrase "the posing of a question", where nothing is being arranged in space.

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