regaining

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of regain.

   The team is regaining momentum after a difficult start to the season.

   Regaining the public's trust took the company several years.

   Note

   One -ing form does two jobs here. After a form of be it builds the progressive (is regaining momentum); on its own it is a verbal noun that still behaves like a verb. Because regain is transitive, the gerund takes its object directly, as in regaining the public's trust, with no of. Add the and an of-phrase and you have the noun for the act, which can even go plural.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of recovering something that was lost, taken, or given up.

   The regaining of national independence was celebrated for generations.

   Her gradual regaining of mobility encouraged the whole rehabilitation team.

   Similarrecovery, restoration, recapture, retrieval

   Oppositeloss

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, this noun can be counted, and in the plural it tends to stand beside its opposite. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review of 1842 foresees "an alternation of such losings and regainings" in England. Samuel Kleinberg's Scoliosis (1926) describes creeping as "reversals and regainings" of a posture. Paired with a word for loss, regaining becomes one half of a repeating cycle rather than a single recovery.

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