steeling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of steel.

   The soldiers were steeling themselves for the long march.

   Steeling herself against the cold, she pushed the door open.

   Note

   Behind the familiar bracing of nerves lies a set of workshop uses: edging or pointing a tool with steel, sharpening a knife on a honing steel, electroplating an engraving plate with iron, and turning iron itself into steel. Backing something with steel and dosing a medicinal liquid with it are obsolete. As a gerund it takes its object directly (steeling the plate), while the noun takes of and can be plural.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The strengthening of something with steel, or as though with steel.

   The steeling of the ship's hull protected it against the crushing ice.

   Her years in the field gave a certain steeling to her resolve.

   Similarstrengthening, hardening, reinforcement, toughening

   Oppositeweakening, softening

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted and made plural. In engineering, steelings are the steel parts themselves: The Australasian Engineer (1951) describes toggle joints fitted with steelings of special hardened steel. Used figuratively, each act of resolve counts as one, and Francis Stewart Leland Lyons's John Dillon (1968) can call all steelings of the heart useless against real terror.

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