soldiering

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The work of a soldier, including fighting and the other duties involved in military action.

   Decades of soldiering left him with both medals and scars.

   She found soldiering far more demanding than any civilian job she had held.

   Similarservice, fighting

   Note

   A noun that can even be counted. John George Nicolay's Abraham Lincoln: A History (1914) has two comrades coming back "from their soldierings," treating each man's spell of service as a separate stint. More often it is a mass noun for the everyday business of military life rather than battle itself. BioWare's Mass Effect (2007) speaks of the "routine soldiering" of static garrisons and patrols.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of soldier.

   After soldiering through two campaigns, he returned home for good.

   They were soldiering on the frontier when news of the peace treaty arrived.

   Note

   One spelling carries several quite different verbs. Soldiering can mean serving in the army, pressing on steadfastly, or, in the language of work, deliberately going as slowly as one can without being punished. Context matters: a soldiering employee may be shirking, not persevering. All three uses are intransitive. Only the slang sense of riding someone else's horse without permission takes an object. The countable noun is the work of a soldier.

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