removing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of remove.

   Workers are removing the old carpet from the hallway.

   Removing the stain required several washes.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the silent e of remove. Every sense of remove is transitive, so the participle almost always takes a direct object. You remove the carpet, remove a batsman, or remove a doubt from your mind. That object is how you tell the gerund apart from the noun meaning removal. The noun usually takes an "of" phrase instead: the removing of the carpet.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process of taking something away; the carrying out of a removal.

   The removing of obstacles from the path took most of the morning.

   Her job involves the careful removing of paint from antique furniture.

   Similarclearing, elimination, stripping, extraction

   Note

   This is a countable noun as well as the name of an action, so it has a plural, removings, which the gerund does not. Its sharpest use is legal. Aeneas James George Mackay's Manual of Practice in the Court of Session (1893) writes of "removings of tenants" and a "conclusion for removing". There the word names putting a tenant out of a property, a step taken through the court.

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