relieving

Pluralrelievings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of relieve.

   Volunteers are relieving the exhausted staff after a long night.

   She spent the afternoon relieving her coworker at the front desk.

   Note

   The verb at work almost always has an object: relieving the staff, relieving pain, relieving the poor. Every current sense of relieve is transitive, so the participle and the gerund both carry what is being eased. The same spelling can also stand alone before a noun as the adjective "bringing relief", or take a plural as the archaic noun for contrast.

2. 2
   adjective

   Bringing relief by easing pain, distress, or physical discomfort.

   The cool evening air was a relieving change after the day's heat.

   There was something deeply relieving about finally hearing good news.

   Similarsoothing, comforting, refreshing, reassuring

   Oppositedistressing, stressful

   Note

   An adjective that grades easily: one thing can be more relieving than another, and the best news the most relieving of all. It sits naturally before its noun, as in Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace (1977), where France greets "the relieving dawn" like a weary insomniac. The word describes what brings the relief. The person who feels it is relieved.

3. 3
   nounarchaic

   A change in color, texture, or the like introduced to break up monotony.

   The carver worked a relieving of lighter grain into the dark cabinet to soften its heaviness.

   The light—divested of its aching brilliancy, lies sweetly upon the floor, checkered as that old man's life, in its quaint, yet charming relievings of shadow.

   1855, Arthur's Illustrated Home Magazine

   Note

   A painter's and decorator's word from the mid-1800s. It is usually plural and followed by of: George Field's Rudiments of the Painters' Art (1850) sets purple flowers against "relievings of" yellow, and Arthur's Illustrated Home Magazine (1855) describes light lying in "relievings of shadow." Today it reads as period language. It suits historical pastiche better than modern description, where plain contrast does the same work.

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