striking

Pluralstrikings

1. 1
   adjective

   Drawing immediate attention by being unusual, impressive, or beautiful enough to make a strong impression.

   The portrait was striking enough to stop visitors in the gallery.

   There is a striking resemblance between the two cousins.

   Similararresting

   Oppositeunremarkable, ordinary, plain, inconspicuous

   Note

   Its natural home is after a linking verb or before an abstract noun. A man may look quite striking in a new suit, or, in Emerson Hough's The Purchase Price (1910), would have seemed striking in any company. A reaction can come with striking vehemence. Arresting is the close synonym. Both take more and most, which the strike-action meaning never does.

2. 2
   adjective

   Engaged in a work stoppage as part of organized industrial action; on strike.

   Striking nurses negotiated through the night with hospital management.

   Police kept watch as striking dockworkers blocked the loading bays.

   Oppositeworking

   Note

   Here the word points straight to a work stoppage, and it does not grade: no worker is more striking than another on the picket line. That is the quickest test when a phrase like a striking employee could be read as the "impressive" meaning. Its opposite is written either non-striking or nonstriking, with or without the hyphen.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of strike.

   Lightning was striking the ridge all through the storm.

   The boxer kept striking at his opponent's lowered guard.

   Note

   The -ing form serves both the progressive (lightning was striking the ridge) and the gerund (striking the match took three tries). It carries every meaning of strike: hitting, crossing out, and stamping, as in striking a medal. In dated use it can also mean running aground on a rock or bank. Context, not form, tells the reader which meaning applies.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The action through which one thing hits another or is itself hit.

   The rapid striking of the keys filled the workshop with sound.

   A single striking of the gong signaled the start of the ceremony.

   Similarhitting, beating, tapping, stroke, beat

   Note

   The noun of the act can be counted, and its plural is strikings. Andrew Pessin's Uncommon Sense (2012) pairs strikings of a match with lightings to pose a puzzle about causation: one event regularly following another does not prove that the first causes it. In the singular it usually takes of, as in the striking of a gong.

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