rushing

Pluralrushings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of rush.

   Rushing through the report, he overlooked two obvious errors.

   Water was rushing down the gutters after the storm.

   Note

   Behind this form stands a verb that works in two directions. Without an object it means hurrying or surging, as with water rushing down a gutter. With an object it can mean doing a task too fast (rushing the report), pushing someone into haste, or, in sport, charging at another player. When the -ing word sits before a noun and simply describes, as in rushing water, it has crossed into the "surging" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Moving or flowing quickly and with strong, surging force.

   The rushing current made it dangerous to cross the narrow stream.

   Every spring a rushing torrent of meltwater fills the canyon floor.

   Similarswift, raging, gushing, torrential

   Oppositesluggish, still, stagnant

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A quick, surging movement forward.

   The rushing of the river grew louder as we neared the falls.

   She felt a sudden rushing in her ears moments before she fainted.

   Similarsurge, roar, whoosh

   Note

   The noun counts as well as flows: it takes a plural. Alexander Tweedie and William Wood Gerhard's A System of Practical Medicine (1841) describes "a succession of interrupted rushings" of air into a lung. The singular, often with the, names one continuous sound or sensation, like the rushing of a river. The plural breaks that movement into separate surges, a useful choice when the motion comes in bursts.

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