representing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of represent.

   The senator is representing constituents from three rural districts.

   Representing the firm in court demanded years of careful preparation.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (the senator is representing three districts). Without be it heads a phrase as a verbal noun that still takes a direct object, as in representing the firm. It carries every meaning of represent, from acting on someone's behalf to portraying a character. Put of before the object and it becomes the noun for an act.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An act or instance of standing in for, depicting, or speaking on behalf of someone or something.

   The representing of distant communities in parliament has long been debated.

   Their careful representing of the client's interests shaped the final agreement.

   Similaradvocacy, depiction, portrayal

   Note

   Philosophers have a use for the plural that representation does not easily supply. In Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson's Kant and the Philosophy of Mind (2017), representings are the mental episodes themselves, set against the representations whose content they make up. The -ing ending keeps the act in view, while representation can name either the act or what it produces.

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