preparing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of prepare.

   The chef is preparing a special menu for the evening service.

   Volunteers were preparing meals for the shelter long before sunrise.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. As a participle it follows be in progressive tenses (is preparing a menu). As a gerund it fills a noun's slot (preparing the soil takes days). The verb behind it works both ways: with an object, as in preparing dinner or preparing a compound, and without one, meaning to get oneself ready. The countable noun with a plural is the "preparation" noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process of getting something ready; preparation.

   The preparing of the legal documents required several days of meticulous attention.

   Her thorough preparing of the soil ensured a strong harvest that fall.

   Similarpreparation

   Note

   A true noun rather than a verb in disguise. What sets it apart from the gerund is that it can be counted and pluralized as preparings, each one a separate act of readying. Dickens writes of "the kind smoothings and preparings of the way" in A Tale of Two Cities (1859). The Ladies' Repository of 1854 uses the plural for the stages of readying worsted yarn.

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