shoring

Pluralshorings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Temporary bracing put in place to keep a structure such as a tunnel, trench, or wall from collapsing.

   Like a cast holding a broken bone steady while it heals.

   Inspectors refused to approve the site until adequate shoring was installed along the trench.

   The crew added steel shoring to brace the crumbling retaining wall.

   Similarbracing, support, props

   Note

   The bracing itself works as a mass noun, taking words like adequate and steel the way timber or scaffolding would. It also counts, with the plural shorings. Here is the result of what the verb form describes: a crew shores a trench, and what holds the trench open is shoring.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of shore.

   The construction team is shoring the riverbank before the spring floods arrive.

   Shoring the failing foundation took the engineers most of the week.

   Note

   Two jobs share this -ing form: the progressive (they are shoring the bank) and the verbal noun (shoring the foundation took a week). In current use it carries the support meanings of shore. On its own it means propping something up with support, while shoring up usually means reinforcing something at risk of failing. The older meanings of the verb, landing ashore or the Scots sense of threatening, are obsolete or archaic.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2