rescuing

Pluralrescuings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of rescue.

   Volunteers spent the night rescuing animals stranded by the flood.

   Rescuing the trapped miners took nearly three days of careful digging.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the final e of rescue and carries every meaning the verb has. That range runs from pulling people out of floodwater to a laboratory use, where rescuing a trait means restoring something an organism lost, often through an experiment. Because the verb is transitive in all these uses, the -ing form normally takes a direct object: rescuing animals, rescuing a lost function.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of carrying out a rescue, freeing a person or thing from danger or confinement.

   The rescuing of survivors continued well into the night despite the storm.

   Successful rescuing depends on calm teamwork and reliable equipment.

   Similarsaving, evacuation, extraction

   Note

   A noun that can be counted as well as used in the mass, and the plural is where it gets interesting. John Galsworthy's Beyond (1917) gives Aunt Rosamund "perpetual rescuings of lost dogs, lame horses, and penniless musicians," turning rescue into a habit of separate acts. As a noun it takes the and links to its object with of (the rescuing of survivors). the verb form takes its object directly (rescuing survivors).

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