spiking

Pluralspikings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of spike.

   Hospital admissions were spiking as the flu spread through the city.

   Spiking someone's drink can lead to serious criminal charges.

   Note

   Context decides which spike is meant: prices spiking climb steeply, a volleyball player spiking drives the ball down, and someone spiking a drink adds alcohol or a drug, often without the drinker knowing. As a gerund it still takes an object (spiking the punch), and in American football, spiking the ball is slang for slamming it to the ground.

2. 2
   adjective

   Involving or producing one or more sudden, sharp increases.

   Researchers built a spiking neural network that imitates the way brain cells fire.

   A spiking fever that comes and goes can be a sign of infection.

   Note

   Neuroscience and computing have made this sense their own: a spiking neuron, living or modeled, fires in brief sharp pulses, and a spiking neural network imitates that pattern. Laboratory usage is different: spiking chemicals are the ones added in known amounts to a sample, which comes from the verb for lacing a sample rather than from any surge.

3. 3
   adjective

   Sticking out sharply like a spike, or spiky in shape.

   Spiking towers of rock rose above the desert floor.

   A row of spiking icicles hung from the edge of the roof.

   Similarjagged, pointed, spiky

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of something being spiked, such as a drink secretly laced with alcohol or drugs.

   Police reported a rise in drink spikings at downtown bars over the holidays.

   The spiking of each soil sample with a known amount of lead let the lab check its accuracy.

   Similarlacing

   Note

   The noun counts, and it fuses easily with what was spiked: separate incidents become drink-spikings, which Barry Maitland's Dark Mirror lists beside suspected poisonings and unexplained deaths. The compound appears both hyphenated and open (drink spikings); either way it names a crime.

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