screwing

Pluralscrewings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of screw.

   The carpenter is screwing the boards together along the seam.

   Screwing the panels into place took most of the afternoon.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (she is screwing the lid on). In noun positions it works as a gerund (screwing the panels took hours). It carries every meaning of the verb, from fastening with screws to cheating, extorting, contorting, or miskicking a ball, so a vulgar reading can slip in where only carpentry was meant.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or instance of fastening, turning, or otherwise screwing something, in any of the verb's senses.

   The screwing of each panel had to follow a strict sequence.

   A final bit of screwing secured the hinge to the door frame.

   Similarfastening, fixing

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this is a true noun, so it takes an article and a plural. George Dodd's The Curiosities of Industry and the Applied Sciences (1854) counts them: "as many screwings and unscrewings as there are copies to be printed." The Railway Times of 1843 uses the money sense instead, complaining of "screwings out of the poor pittance". There the word means what is extorted, not what is turned.

3. 3
   nounslangvulgarcountable

   A coarse slang word for an act of sexual intercourse.

   He boasted about the screwing to anyone who would listen.

   A meaningless screwing in a cheap motel left them both feeling empty.

   Similarshag, bonk

   Note

   This is vulgar slang. It is at home only in deliberately crude or boastful talk and is out of place in polite company or formal writing. It shares its spelling with the everyday noun for fastening. A phrase like the screwing of the panels stays innocent, but a bare "the screwing" said about people will be heard this way.

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