stilling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of still.

   A long silence followed, stilling every conversation in the room.

   She found that stilling her breath helped her aim.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of the verb. It can describe calming a room, letting something fall in drops, or distilling a spirit. As a gerund it takes a direct object with no preposition (stilling her breath). The noun for the act has the same spelling but takes of instead (the stilling of the storm), and that is the quickest way to tell them apart.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act by which something in motion or unrest is brought to a state of calm or stillness.

   Like the moment a spinning top finally settles and stops.

   The stilling of the storm came as a relief to everyone aboard.

   Meditation often begins with a gradual stilling of the restless mind.

   Similarcalming, quieting, settling, hushing

   Oppositeagitation, disturbance, stirring

   Note

   Film criticism has found a use for it. Griselda Pollock and Maxim Silverman's Concentrationary Cinema (2011) speaks of "arrests/stillings of image and spectator," pairing it with arrest for moments when both the picture and the viewer are brought to a halt. Unlike calm, it is countable, so the plural stillings works naturally when there are many separate halts.

3. 3
   nounobsoleteUK

   A stand or frame that holds casks or barrels steady, typically in a cellar or brewery.

   Like a cradle that keeps a heavy cask from shifting or rolling.

   He heaved the full barrel up onto the stilling before tapping it.

   The old stilling in the inn's cellar had held kegs for generations.

   Note

   A different word altogether, related not to still but to German stellen, "to set, to place"; compare Low German Stelling. Despite the spelling, it names something casks are set upon, not the act of calming anything. It belongs to obsolete British dialect, so a modern writer should use stillion for the same stand.

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