sparking

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of spark.

   Loose wiring in the panel was sparking throughout the night.

   The controversial speech kept sparking arguments across campus.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. Used intransitively, it describes something that gives off sparks (the wiring was sparking). Used transitively, it describes something that sets another thing going (sparking a debate, sparking a blaze). Unlike the act-of-producing noun, the gerund can take an object directly. Older English also had an archaic use in which sparking meant wooing, courting, or playing the gallant.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of producing a spark, such as a brief flash of electricity or fire.

   The sparking of the welder lit up the dark workshop.

   Constant sparking from the frayed cable eventually started a fire.

   Similararcing, flashing, crackling

   Note

   The noun can be counted, and it can leave the workshop. Its plural, sparkings, names separate small bursts rather than one continuous process. Marcel Theroux's Strange Bodies (2013) turns it inward with "the collateral sparkings of a dying consciousness," stray flickers from a failing mind. The plural suits that figurative sense of brief, scattered outputs. The singular keeps closer to the physical flash.

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