smarting

Pluralsmartings

1. 1
   adjective

   Sore and painful, with a sharp stinging quality.

   The antiseptic left a smarting line across the back of his hand.

   Her sunburned shoulders stayed smarting well into the evening.

   Similarpainful, sore, aching, tender, raw

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of smart.

   Her grazed palms were smarting all the way home.

   The cold wind set his bare ears smarting within minutes.

   Note

   The verb form behind the adjectives and the noun, and the one that pairs with an auxiliary: my arm is smarting, her palms were smarting. The verb smart works both ways. It is intransitive when a part of you hurts and transitive when something causes the sting, and it reaches to pain of mind as well. Only the verb is involved: the adjective smart, "clever," has no -ing form, so smarting never means being clever.

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   Feeling lingering emotional hurt or embarrassment.

   The author, smarting from a harsh review, avoided the press for weeks.

   He was still smarting after losing the election so publicly.

   Similarpained, ashamed

   Oppositeunfazed, unbothered, untroubled, unruffled

   Note

   Here the sting has moved from the skin to the pride. The figurative use often names its cause with from: smarting from a review, a defeat, a rebuke. It keeps the feel of a fresh wound. Pained is broader, and ashamed points at guilt. Smarting suggests a blow taken from outside, felt keenly and not yet healed. It grows directly out of the physical sting.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A sharp stinging or sore sensation.

   Salt water on his cuts brought on a smarting that made him wince.

   A faint smarting lingered where the nettle had brushed her arm.

   Similarstinging, sting, burning, soreness, tingling

   Note

   The noun has a direct ancestor in Old English smeortung, "smarting, itching." It counts both ways: a smarting on the skin, or smartings in the plural. Thomas Halyburton's Natural Religion Insufficient (1714) sets "the smartings of our own conscience" beside the penalties of law. There the mind's sting is named as something suffered again and again.

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