relaying

Pluralrelayings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of relay.

   Reporters at the scene were relaying updates every few minutes.

   The satellite is relaying television signals across the ocean.

   Note

   Relay keeps its y before -ing, as play does. Most uses pass something along, such as news, signals or an order, but the same letters can spell re-lay, to lay again: Michael Harris, describing the North Yorkshire Moors Railway in 1979, has weekend volunteer gangs engaged on relaying, which means putting down track. Writers who want to keep the two apart spell that one re-laying.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An instance of something being passed on from one person or place to another.

   Each relaying of the order down the chain of command introduced small errors.

   Researchers recorded the interpreter's relayings and compared them with the original speech.

   Similartransmission

   Note

   Here the -ing form becomes a noun you can count and put in the plural: Melanie Metzger's Sign Language Interpreting (1999) observes that most of an interpreter's relayings are renditions of what was said. That is its natural home, writing that studies messages passed along step by step, where each separate handing-on needs a name of its own.

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