predicting

Pluralpredictings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of predict.

   Economists are predicting slower growth for the coming year.

   Predicting earthquakes with any accuracy remains beyond current science.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (are predicting slower growth). At the head of a phrase it is a gerund that still takes its object directly (predicting earthquakes). That bare object is the quickest way to tell it from the countable noun, which needs of and can go plural. Like predict itself, it can also stand without an object: they kept predicting, and kept being wrong.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A statement made in advance about a future event or outcome; a prediction.

   The analyst's predicting of the market crash earned her wide praise.

   Ancient texts are full of strange predictings about the end of the world.

   Similarprediction, forecast, prophecy, prognostication

   Note

   The noun that counts takes a plural, predictings. It means what prediction means, but the -ing keeps the act of foretelling in view. John Finnis's Religion and Public Reasons (2011) sets the prophets' "prophetic predictings" against their "human imaginings," and the matched endings carry the contrast. Where the act matters less than the claim itself, prediction says the same thing more plainly.

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