profiling

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The forensic science of constructing an outline of a person's individual characteristics from evidence and behavior.

   Like a detective sketching a person's likeness, but drawn from behavior and evidence instead of a face.

   The investigation relied on profiling to build a portrait of the unknown offender.

   Criminal profiling draws on patterns from past cases to describe a likely suspect.

   Note

   Two faces share this word. As an investigative method it is neutral: building a picture of an unknown person from evidence. In policing, though, profiling can be something an officer is accused of. Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers (2019) pairs being "accused of profiling or pretextual stops" with pulling over motorists, and there it means acting on a stereotype. Check which meaning a sentence intends before using it.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of profile.

   The software keeps profiling users as they browse the site.

   Profiling the suspect took the team several days of careful work.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the final e of profile and carries every sense of the verb with it, so context decides which one is meant. A developer profiling a program measures its parts to find bottlenecks. A machinist profiling a piece gives it shape by milling, and an artist profiling a face draws it in outline. Only the summary-making and stereotyping uses lead to the investigative method.

3. 3
   nounhistoricaluncountable

   In building military earthworks, the placing of wooden frames at set intervals to show workers the cross-sectional shape of the parapets.

   Like a full-size template staked into the ground so builders can match the planned shape.

   The engineer began the profiling at dawn, setting wooden frames along the planned parapet.

   Without proper profiling, the workers could not judge how steep to raise the slope.

   Note

   A military engineer's term from the era of earthwork fortification, now met mainly in historical writing. A profile here is a wooden template set up along the line, giving the workers the cross-section of the parapet to build to. Profiling is the work of setting these out at intervals. It is a construction step and has nothing to do with the investigative method.

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