recalling

Pluralrecallings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of recall.

   Recalling the accident in vivid detail, he could barely finish his statement.

   The government is recalling its diplomats from the region.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of recall: summoning diplomats home, revoking an order, removing an elected official (a US use), or bringing the past to mind. As a gerund it takes a direct object (recalling the accident). the noun for the act shares the spelling but takes of instead (the recalling of the accident), and it alone can be pluralized as recallings.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act by which something is brought back to mind, or by which something is summoned back.

   The slow recalling of those buried memories brought her unexpected comfort.

   His precise recalling of the contract terms settled the dispute.

   Similarrecollection, remembering, remembrance

   Note

   Countable as well as uncountable, so a single act of remembering can be counted on its own. Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger (c. 1908) uses the plural for grief: in the first days of a bereavement the narrator wants to be alone with "our bitter recallings." The plural suits memories that return again and again, while the singular, usually followed by of, names one act.

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