sponging

Pluralspongings

1. 1
   wipingverb

   Present participle and gerund of sponge.

   The nurse was sponging the patient's forehead with cool water.

   He hung around the bar all night, sponging for free drinks.

   Note

   Cleaning and scrounging share this form, and the words around it tell them apart. The cleaning verb takes a direct object (sponging the patient's forehead); the scrounging one takes for what is wanted and off whoever pays (sponging off his brother). A character in Stevenson's Treasure Island dreads becoming "a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach!"

2. 2
   a washnouncountable

   An application of a sponge to something, as when wiping it down or bathing it with water.

   Regular spongings with lukewarm water helped bring the child's fever down.

   After a sponging with soapy water, the plastic patio chairs looked almost new.

   Similarwash, wipe

   Note

   Where the verb's -ing form names the action as it goes on, this noun counts it: one sponging, several spongings. William Shearman, writing in the New Medical and Physical Journal in 1815, used cold air and "very often spongings with cold water" to moderate the heat of the skin. With names the liquid, the same pattern used today when someone describes cooling a feverish child.

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