rebelling

Pluralrebellings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of rebel.

   Colonists across the region were rebelling against the crown's demands.

   The province kept rebelling against every governor sent to rule it.

   Note

   Spelled with a doubled l: the final consonant of rebel doubles before -ing. Like the verb itself, it takes no direct object, so what is resisted follows against, as in rebelling against the crown. After be it forms the progressive (were rebelling). Standing alone, it works as a verbal noun (rebelling against him was pointless), which shades into the noun for an act of defiance.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An act or feeling of resistance against an established authority or set of rules.

   The teenager's rebelling was dismissed by relatives as just a passing phase.

   A slow rebelling spread through the ranks once the unfair orders piled up.

   Similardefiance, resistance, revolt, insubordination, rebellion

   Oppositeobedience, conformity

   Note

   An old formation, Middle English rebellyng, that still behaves as a countable noun and takes a plural. Justin McCarthy's Julian Revelstone (1909) shows it at its most natural. Clarice obeys her elders "not without some inward rebellings": private stirrings of resistance rather than open revolt. Where rebellion tends to name the uprising, the plural rebellings suits feelings that rise and subside.

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