powdering

Pluralpowderings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   An application or patch of powder spread over a surface.

   A quick powdering of the nose kept the shine away under the studio lights.

   The baker finished each pastry with a delicate powdering of cinnamon.

   Similardusting, sprinkling, coating

   Note

   Small amounts of one thing scattered through something larger can also be a powdering. Nicholas Udall, writing in 1564, called a sprinkling of Greek in Latin prose its "poutheryng" and compared such mixing to a feast set with a variety of dishes. The figure still works today: a powdering of snow, of freckles, of foreign phrases. In each case the layer is light and spread thin, never heaped.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of powder.

   Workers were powdering the molds with fine talc.

   She spent the morning powdering pastries in the bakery.

   Note

   Behind the -ing form stands a verb with several meanings. Used transitively, it means coating something (powdering the molds) or grinding it fine. Used intransitively, it means putting powder on one's skin or crumbling into powder. Two older meanings survive at the edges: an obsolete sense of salting meat, and slang for leaving suddenly, as in "take a powder." Only the nouns spelled like this take a plural: powderings.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   One of the small black tufts of ermine fur dotted over the white of a ceremonial robe of state.

   The coronation robe was patterned with rows of powderings across the ermine.

   A craftsman stitched each powdering into place along the white border.

   Note

   On ermine the word names a pattern rather than a coating. The black tufts are dotted across white fur the way a dusting of powder lies across a surface, and each tuft takes the name. Because it names a single object, it counts freely: rows of powderings on a robe. The everyday sense more often describes one light layer.

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