scrubbing

SaySKRUB-ing/ˈskɹʌbɪŋ/

3 meanings of scrubbing

1
verb
Present participle and gerund of scrub.
She spent the morning scrubbing grout with an old toothbrush.
He kept scrubbing back and forth through the video to find the exact frame.
Note
As a participle it follows be (she was scrubbing the floor); as a gerund it heads its own phrase (scrubbing the deck took all morning). While an object follows directly, it is still the verb. Once it takes a or of, as in a thorough scrubbing of the deck, it has become the noun for a cleaning.
2
nouncountable or uncountable
A cleaning in which something is rubbed hard, or the action of rubbing something hard to clean it.
The boat's hull got a thorough scrubbing before it went back into the water.
No amount of scrubbing could lift the red wine out of the carpet.
Similarscouring, cleaning
3
noununcountable
The process of removing impurities from a gas.
Wet scrubbing of the flue gas removes most of the sulfur dioxide before it reaches the stack.
Biogas must undergo scrubbing to strip out carbon dioxide before it can be piped into the grid.

scrubbing is a form of scrub

scrub, verb: To rub something hard to clean or brighten it, usually with a wet brush or something coarse; also, to do this kind of hard cleaning. Full entry

Forms: scrubscrubs he/she/itscrubbing -ing formscrubbed past tense, past participle
Spelling: scrub → scrubbing: double the b, add -ing

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of scrubbing apart? Answer 4 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

Formed from scrub + -ing.