providing

Pluralprovidings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of provide.

   Crews are providing emergency shelter to residents displaced by the wildfire.

   Local farmers kept providing fresh vegetables to the food bank all summer.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty: as a participle it builds progressives (crews are providing shelter), and as a gerund it names the activity (providing for a family is hard work). It keeps the verb's patterns, so you can provide shelter to residents, provide residents with shelter, or provide for the future. The verb's sense of setting a condition is the one that hardened into the conditional conjunction.

2. 2
   conjunction

   On the condition that; used to introduce a requirement that must be met for something else to occur.

   The committee approved the budget, providing that each department submits quarterly reports.

   Tenants may keep pets, providing they pay an additional deposit.

   Similarprovided

   Note

   A conditional conjunction, interchangeable with provided. Both can take that or drop it: providing that each department reports, or providing they pay a deposit. To tell it from the participle, look at what follows. The conjunction introduces a full clause with its own subject, while the participle takes an object, as in providing food. The conditional use comes from the verb's meaning "to stipulate."

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Something supplied or made available; a provision.

   Each providing for the expedition was checked against the list before loading.

   The household's winter providings filled the cellar to the rafters.

   Similarprovision, supply, store

   Note

   A countable noun with a regular plural, providings, for whatever has been supplied to a household or a person. Justin Dewey Fulton's The True Woman (1869) blames neglected domestic duties partly on "inadequate providings" from careless husbands. That phrase shows the typical company it keeps: the word sits close to provisions and supplies, and adjectives judge whether the supply was enough.

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