stating

Pluralstatings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of state.

   The witness is stating the events exactly as she remembers them.

   Stating the obvious rarely helps in a tense negotiation.

   Note

   The participle of a transitive verb, so it nearly always has an object right behind it: stating the facts, stating one's name. It comes only from the verb meanings of state, declaring or making known, and never from the noun's "condition" senses, so stating has nothing to do with being in a state. Once it is given an article and an of-phrase (the stating of the case), it has become the countable noun.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A statement; an expression of something in spoken or written words.

   The committee accepted his orderly stating of the case without objection.

   A precise stating of the terms appeared at the top of the contract.

   Similarstatement, presentation, exposition, formulation, expression

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, this noun can be counted and made plural. Slavoj Zizek's Organs without Bodies (2016) writes of "tautological statings of the obvious," turning the familiar phrase stating the obvious into a set of separate acts. As a true noun it takes articles, adjectives and an of-phrase (an orderly stating of the case), which the verbal form cannot do.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2