ribbing

Pluralribbings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Light-hearted teasing or mockery directed at someone in a friendly way.

   Friendly ribbing followed him around the office after he forgot his own birthday.

   The locker-room ribbing never let up, but nobody took it to heart.

   Similarteasing, banter, joshing, kidding, ragging

   Note

   The teasing takes its name from the body: rib meaning "tease" comes from the old habit of tickling someone's ribs to make them laugh. As a mass noun it pairs naturally with good-natured, friendly or a lot of, as in a lot of ribbing at school or good-natured ribbing. The word keeps that affectionate edge. For one bout of it, see the countable "a ribbing".

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A rib or set of ribs forming raised ridges across the surface of an object.

   The knitted ribbing around the collar gives the garment its stretch.

   Steel ribbing reinforced the inside of the ship's hull.

   Similarridging

   Note

   The structural sense comes from rib as a ridge that shapes or supports, and it counts both ways. Knitters use it as a mass noun for the stretchy band of raised columns at a cuff or collar. Glass collectors count it: MacIver Percival's The Glass Collector (1919) describes stems decorated with perpendicular ribbings. Use the plural for distinct sets of ridges and the singular for the texture as a whole.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A single occasion of teasing or making fun of someone.

   She gave her brother a quick ribbing about his terrible parking.

   The rookie endured a few ribbings before the crew accepted him.

   Similarteasing, razzing

   Note

   This sense is countable, unlike the teasing itself. You give someone a ribbing, or take a few ribbings, the way you might take a scolding. The article marks a single bout with a beginning and an end. Without it, ribbing is the ongoing atmosphere of a locker room or an office, not one episode within it.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle of rib.

   The crew spent the whole drive ribbing each other about old mistakes.

   He was ribbing his sister over her choice of music.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. In they were ribbing him it is the participle; in ribbing him was easy it is the gerund. It also carries every verb sense of rib, not only teasing. A frame can be ribbing a structure with supports. In plowing, ribbing land is transitive and takes the field as its object: it means leaving strips of undisturbed ground between the furrows.

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