spiriting

Pluralspiritings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of spirit.

   The agents were spiriting the witness to a secret location.

   Spiriting his savings out of the country took months of planning.

   Note

   One spelling carries two quite different verbs. One means to carry off in haste, secrecy or mystery. The other means to animate or encourage, and it is sometimes followed by up (spiriting up a weary crew). The same form also works as a noun, as in the ghostly action or inspiration, and only those nouns take a plural, spiritings. The verbal gerund never does.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of inspiring someone; the arousing of energy, courage, or creative thought.

   The captain's speech provided a spiriting that revived the weary volunteers.

   The poet sat at her desk all night waiting for some spiriting from the muse, but the page stayed blank.

   Similarinspiration, encouragement, boost

   Oppositediscouragement

   Note

   Inspiration in the poet's sense, the breath that a muse or a master passes on. In 1818 Keats, writing to Spenser, longs to escape toil "and receive thy spiriting." The possessive matters: the spiriting belongs to the giver, and the poet receives it rather than produces it. In ordinary prose, inspiration does the same job without the poetic charge.

3. 3
   nounliteraryuncountable

   The action or activity of a spirit or ghost.

   Locals blamed the spiriting away of the lighthouse keeper on the ghosts said to haunt the cove.

   She woke to the eerie spiriting of something unseen drifting through the hall.

   Note

   A word for ghost stories and folklore rather than plain report, and it often keeps the away of spirit away: the supposed spiritings away of missing children. A word like supposed lets the writer blame a vanishing on something unseen while keeping a careful distance. When the people doing the carrying off are ordinary and secretive, the verb is the natural choice.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3