refereeing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of referee.

   Refereeing a championship final demands calm under constant pressure.

   He has spent years refereeing professional basketball across the country.

   Note

   The form does two grammatical jobs. As a participle it builds continuous tenses (she is refereeing the final); as a gerund it names the activity and can stand as a subject (Refereeing a final demands calm). The spelling is regular: the verb's final -ee simply takes -ing, leaving three e's in a row. When the thing judged is a manuscript rather than a match, the word shades into the peer-review noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The process by which experts examine a scholarly paper to judge its quality before publication.

   The paper spent six months in refereeing before being accepted.

   Strict refereeing improves the reliability of published findings.

   Similarreview, reviewing

   Note

   A referee can rule on a manuscript as well as on a match, and this noun names that scholarly kind of judging. It is usually uncountable: a paper undergoes refereeing, and editors speak of strict or careful refereeing. The plural refereeings does exist, for separate instances of review. Keep it apart from the sporting gerund, where refereeing a game is still the verb at work.

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