suing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of sue.

   The investors are suing the firm for breach of contract.

   Several tenants are suing over unsafe living conditions.

   Note

   Most often met in the courtroom meaning, with the party being sued as a direct object: suing the firm, suing a landlord. The older pleading meaning works differently. It needs for and the thing asked for, as in suing for mercy. The final e of sue drops before -ing. The same spelling also serves as a gerund (suing them was a mistake), close kin to the noun for pleading.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of one who seeks, petitions, or pleads for something.

   The ambassador's suing for a truce was met with silence.

   Years of suing for royal favor brought him nothing.

   Similarpleading, petitioning, begging

   Note

   The pleading meaning made into a noun, and one that can be counted. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834) writes of "suings for forgiveness" after a husband's storms of passion. The plural treats each plea as a separate act rather than one long effort. The noun keeps the verb's for, naming what is pleaded for: suing for a truce, suings for forgiveness.

3. 3
   nounobsoleteuncountable

   The process of a liquid soaking all the way through something.

   Note

   A different word in the same spelling. Compare French suer, "to sweat." It names a liquid working its way through a solid. Francis Bacon pairs it with percolation in 1627, describing verjuice passing through wood. Now obsolete, it turns up only in older texts, and percolation is the word a modern writer would use. Nothing of the pleading sense belongs in it.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3