relating

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of relate.

   The professor kept relating each new theory back to the original experiment.

   Relating to people from very different backgrounds is a genuinely valuable skill.

   Note

   One -ing form does two jobs here. After be it builds the progressive (she was relating the story), and as a gerund it fills a noun slot (Relating to people is a skill). Watch what follows it. With an object plus to, it connects one thing to another: relating each theory to the experiment. With to alone, it means identifying with someone. The noun for making connections shares the spelling and takes a plural, relatings.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of forming or identifying connections or relationships between things or ideas.

   Comparative study depends on the relating of one culture's customs to another's.

   The relating of cause to effect is the foundation of scientific reasoning.

   Similarlinking, association

   Note

   A noun that serious writers are willing to pluralize. Oliver Sacks's Awakenings (1973) speaks of "ceaseless relatings of current perceptions to past mappings," and Stephen Kemmis and Tracey J. Smith (2008) group "sayings, doings and relatings" as the substance of a practice. It keeps the verb's pattern, the relating of one thing to another. Where relation names the connection itself, relating keeps the activity of connecting in view.

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