stranding

Pluralstrandings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The act or event of leaving a person or thing stuck somewhere with no means of getting away.

   The whale stranding on the beach drew marine biologists from across the region.

   Crew members blamed the stranding on a navigation error near the reef.

   Similarbeaching, grounding, marooning

   Note

   It works as a mass noun and a countable one alike. David Bradley, writing in 2023 about driver-only trains, weighs "the probability of stranding" and then counts "several strandings" that ended in unplanned evacuations. That rail use shows how far the word reaches. Anything that leaves people stuck with no way out can be a stranding, whether a halted train or a beached whale.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of strand.

   The falling water level was stranding boats along the riverbank.

   Stranding the climbers above the snowline, the avalanche cut off their only path down.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After be it is a participle (the tide was stranding boats), and in a noun position it is a gerund (stranding the climbers was avoidable). The verb behind it ranges from beaching a ship and abandoning a person to baseball, grammar and rope-making. In rope-making it means breaking a strand or twisting strands together. When the event itself is named and counted, it has become the noun for the event.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   In grammar, leaving a word or phrase (often a preposition) without an expressed complement, or allowing it to stand without one.

   Stranding occurs naturally in questions like 'Where are you from?'

   Some editors still flag stranding in formal writing, though linguists consider it perfectly grammatical.

   Note

   Linguists' best-known case is preposition stranding. The preposition stays put while its object moves to the front of the clause, as in Who did you speak to? or the house we lived in. The alternative carries the preposition along (To whom did you speak?) and sounds markedly formal. The old classroom rule against ending a sentence with a preposition is really a rule against stranding, which questions and relative clauses produce naturally.

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