sloping

1. 1
   adjective

   Set at an angle so that one part sits higher than another, rather than lying flat.

   The architect designed a sloping roof to let rainwater drain away quickly.

   Vineyards thrive on the sloping hillsides where sunlight reaches every row.

   Similarslanting, inclined, angled, pitched, tilted

   Oppositeflat, level, horizontal

   Note

   It compares with more and most, never -er and -est: one roof can be more sloping than another. It usually sits before its noun, as in a sloping roof or the "sloping meadows" of Peter Redgrove's The Laborators (1993). There it describes a settled shape, not an action. For the rising or falling itself, English turns to the verb form.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of slope.

   The path kept sloping downward until it reached the valley floor.

   We could feel the deck sloping as the ship leaned into the turn.

   Note

   Several distinct verbs stand behind this -ing form. Used intransitively, a path is sloping when it tends steadily up or down. Used transitively, a builder is sloping a bank by giving it a slant. In colloquial British use it can mean trying to move somewhere unnoticed. In drill it means carrying a rifle at the slope, resting on the shoulder. Only the surrounding sentence shows which verb is meant.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The arrangement or motion by which something rises or falls at an angle.

   The gradual sloping of the terrain directed all the rainwater into one stream.

   Surveyors recorded the sloping of the hillside before construction began.

   Similarincline, slant, inclination, gradient, fall

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