returning

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of return.

   The soldiers are returning home after a long deployment overseas.

   Returning to her hometown felt strange after so many years away.

   Note

   One spelling, two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (they are returning home), and at the head of a phrase it works as a gerund (Returning the keys was easy). It inherits every use of return, so it can stand alone for coming back or take an object for putting something back. While an object follows directly, it is still a verb. Once of appears, it has become the noun for a coming back.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of someone coming back; a coming back to a place or condition.

   The returning of the stolen artifacts to their country of origin took years of negotiation.

   His sudden returning to the office surprised colleagues who thought he had retired.

   Similarreappearance, comeback

   Oppositedeparture

   Note

   A noun that can be counted and made plural, which the gerund cannot. Michael Phillips's Land of the Brave and the Free (2012) calls a postwar season "a time of returnings." The plural does real work there: it means many separate homecomings, with soldiers everywhere coming back, rather than a single act. As a noun it takes of before the thing brought back, as in the returning of the artifacts.

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