racing

Pluralracings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The sport of competing in races, especially to determine who or what is the fastest.

   Motorcycle racing draws huge crowds to the track each summer.

   She built her career in professional racing before becoming a coach.

   Note

   The name of the sport works as a countable noun as well as a mass noun. Delabere Pritchett Blaine's An Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports (1870) writes of "chariot racings," treating each kind of contest as a separate thing. It also sits before other nouns: O. S. Nock, in Railway Magazine in 1947, says the line north of Edinburgh "was never a racing ground," meaning a stretch where trains ran fast.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of race.

   The sailboats were racing across the bay in a stiff wind.

   Her heart was racing as she opened the envelope.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the silent e of race and carries every sense of the verb. It can take an object (racing a rival to the corner) or stand alone (racing down the hill), and it also describes an engine running fast while out of gear. A rarer use shares the spelling: racing someone can mean perceiving them as belonging to a particular race, which has nothing to do with the sport.

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