soaring

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of soar.

   Fuel prices kept soaring all through the winter.

   Soaring far above the valley, the glider caught the afternoon light.

   Note

   The -ing form of an intransitive verb, so it never takes a direct object: prices are soaring, a glider goes soaring over the ridge. Its range follows soar itself, from a bird riding rising air and a pilot in an unpowered craft to costs climbing unusually fast and spirits lifting. As a gerund it overlaps with the noun for the act of flight, which also takes a plural, soarings.

2. 2
   adjectivefiguratively

   Ascending; rising steeply upward, frequently in a figurative sense.

   The soaring spires of the cathedral drew every visitor's eye upward.

   Investors grew anxious over soaring inflation and shrinking returns.

   Similartowering, lofty, rising

   Note

   A participle that has hardened into an adjective, and it grades like one: more soaring, most soaring. It describes literal height, as in soaring spires, and, sometimes figuratively, a steep climb in numbers, as in soaring fuel prices. Placement tells it apart from the verb form: soaring fuel prices describes the prices, while fuel prices are soaring reports what they are doing.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   Flight high on the wing, or the rising of thought or imagination to lofty heights.

   The effortless soaring of the eagles on warm currents mesmerized the hikers.

   Critics praised the imaginative soaring that lifted her prose above the ordinary.

   Similargliding, flight

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