repeating

Pluralrepeatings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of repeat.

   The teacher is repeating the lesson for students who missed it.

   Repeating the experiment several times confirmed the original result.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs at once. As a participle it builds progressives (she is repeating herself). As a gerund it names the action but still takes a direct object, as in repeating the experiment. Once it takes of instead, as in the repeating of key phrases, it has become the ordinary noun, which can even go plural.

2. 2
   adjective

   Occurring over and over in the same form; showing repetition.

   The song's repeating chorus made it easy to remember.

   She spotted a repeating error in the spreadsheet's formulas.

   Similarrecurring, recurrent, repetitive

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a firearm: able to fire several rounds without being reloaded after each shot.

   The cavalry's repeating carbines gave them a clear edge in rapid exchanges.

   Lever-action repeating rifles changed the pace of nineteenth-century warfare.

   Oppositesingle-shot

4. 4
   adjective

   Of a decimal: having one or more digits that recur endlessly in a fixed pattern.

   One-seventh produces a repeating decimal with a six-digit cycle.

   Any fraction whose denominator has prime factors other than two or five yields a repeating decimal.

   Similarrecurring, periodic

   Oppositeterminating

   Note

   A decimal of this kind always stands for a fraction. After some fixed digits, one block recurs forever: 1/3 is 0.333…, and 1/7 cycles through 142857 without end. On paper the recurring block is marked with a bar over it. Recurring decimal names the same thing, and when the number is read aloud, the bar becomes the spoken marker.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act or process of doing, saying, or producing something again.

   The repeating of key phrases is a common technique in persuasive speech.

   Through sheer repeating, the melody lodged itself firmly in his memory.

   Similarrepetition, reiteration

   Note

   The noun can name the activity in general or count its instances. Edward Capell, in his 1779 Notes and various readings to Shakespeare, complains of editors suppressing the final couplet's repeatings, meaning the individual repeated lines. Use the plural when you mean separate occurrences. Use the mass noun for the process as a whole, as in through sheer repeating.

6. 6
   adjective

   Spoken after the digits of a decimal to indicate where the recurring portion begins when the number is read aloud.

   She dictated the result as "zero point one four two repeating" for the class to write down.

   Reading the figure aloud, he finished with "eight repeating" to signal the endless cycle.

   Similarrecurring

   Note

   On paper a bar does this job; aloud the word does it. It is slotted in just before the digits that cycle, so one point two repeating three four means 1.2 followed by 34 forever: 1.23434…. Its position is the whole message. One point two three repeating four would be a different number, 1.23444…, so the word must sit exactly where the cycle starts.

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