stalling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of stall.

   The engine was stalling repeatedly in the freezing morning air.

   She accused him of stalling to avoid making a decision.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. As a participle it builds progressive tenses (the engine was stalling). As a gerund it names the action (accused him of stalling), and it has hardened into a noun of its own. Behind the delaying meaning sit other uses of stall that this form can carry: putting an animal in its stall, fattening it, installing someone in office, forestalling.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The action of a person who deliberately delays, or of a machine that comes to an unintended stop.

   The committee's endless stalling delayed the final vote for months.

   Repeated stalling of the old engine left them stranded on the highway.

   Similardelay, procrastination, stonewalling, obstruction, temporizing

   Note

   Count it when the stops are separate events: repeated stallings of a car engine, each one a fresh failure. Leave it uncountable when it names a tactic or a habit, as in the committee's endless stalling, where the word means the delaying itself rather than a series of incidents. The plural belongs almost entirely to machines that keep cutting out.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The provision of stable accommodation; the housing of horses or livestock in stalls.

   The estate provided ample stalling for the visiting riders' horses.

   Adequate stalling for the herd became a worry as winter approached.

   Similarstabling, accommodation, housing

   Note

   A word of the inn yard rather than the engine. In Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1859), a traveler asks for "some fair chamber for the night, / And stalling for the horses": room for people and room for beasts, side by side. It is the noun of stall in the sense "to put an animal in a stall." Next to the delaying meaning it can mislead, so a mention of horses or a herd nearby usually settles which is meant.

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