rounding

Pluralroundings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of changing a numerical value to a simpler nearby number, dropping the less significant digits.

   Rounding can change the final total by a few cents.

   The teacher explained rounding using simple two-digit numbers.

   Similarapproximation

   Note

   Here the word names the procedure. It works both as a mass noun for the practice (rounding can distort a total) and as a count noun for a single instance (two roundings in one calculation). The verb behind it runs in two directions, round up and round down, and those phrasal forms say which way the figure moved. The figure that comes out is the rounded result.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The approximate number that results when a value is rounded to a stated precision.

   The rounding shown on the receipt differed slightly from the exact total.

   Accountants record the rounding separately to keep the books balanced.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of round.

   She is rounding the corner at full speed.

   The ship was rounding the cape when the storm hit.

   Note

   The -ing form serves every meaning of the verb, so context decides which one is meant: a ship rounding a cape, a clerk rounding to the nearest thousand, a dog rounding on its owner. That last use needs on, and rounding out means completing something. The same spelling also works as a verbal noun, which is where the arithmetic noun and its neighbors come from.

4. 4
   adjective

   Round or nearly round in shape; becoming round; somewhat rounded.

   The artist preferred soft, rounding forms over sharp angles.

   Its rounding edges made the stone pleasant to hold.

   Similarcurving, curved

   Oppositeangular, sharp

   Note

   A participle that hardened into an adjective: round plus -ing, describing a shape still in the act of curving. Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) gives Tashtego "black rounding eyes," where the word suggests fullness rather than a perfect circle. As a true adjective it compares with more and most (more rounding, most rounding), and it sits most naturally before its noun.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A rounded surface; a gentle curve.

   The rounding of the hilltop caught the evening light.

   He admired the smooth rounding of the old wooden banister.

   Similarcurve, curvature

   Note

   The countable use readily takes a plural. The Journal of the Society of Arts in 1860 speaks of "the roundings of the human figure" that early Egyptian relief barely tried to show. In writing about sculpture and form, the word names the swells and curves a surface carries, not the act of making them, which is the shaping sense.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The act of making something round, such as the lips when pronouncing certain vowels.

   Rounding of the lips changes the sound of the vowel.

   The potter's rounding of the clay took years of practice.

   Note

   Phoneticians use the word for what the lips do: pushed forward and narrowed, they give vowels such as /u/ and /o/ their quality, and the same vowels made without it are called unrounded. The usual phrase is rounding of the lips. The wider sense of shaping anything into a curve, such as a potter working clay, still belongs here too.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The bookbinding step in which the folded, sewn sections are shaped so that the spine curves outward.

   The rounding of the spine prevents the text block from sagging forward.

   Careful rounding ensures the finished volume holds its shape.

   Note

   A bookbinder's step with a fixed place in the sequence. The sewn text block is hammered or machine-shaped so that its spine bulges outward and its fore-edge curves inward to match. Only then is it backed. The curve is what keeps a thick volume from sagging forward on the shelf.

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