supporting

Pluralsupportings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of support.

   The beams are supporting the entire weight of the roof.

   Local volunteers are supporting the relief effort however they can.

   Note

   Here the verb is still doing its work, and an object usually follows to show it. After a form of be it builds the progressive (the beams are supporting the roof); heading a phrase it acts as a noun (supporting a family takes money). Because support takes a direct object in every sense, that object separates this form from the adjective in supporting columns and from the countable noun, which takes a plural.

2. 2
   adjective

   Acting to hold up, strengthen, or assist something or someone.

   Engineers inspected the supporting columns before approving the renovation.

   He won an award for his supporting performance in the film.

   Similarload-bearing, secondary, auxiliary

   Oppositeleading, main

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Something that holds up, braces, or props up another object; a support.

   The mason wedged a supporting under the leaning arch.

   Workers installed extra supportings to brace the tunnel walls.

   Similarprop, brace, strut

   Note

   A countable noun with an ordinary plural, supportings, and it sits most naturally in that plural. Walter Henry Medhurst's A Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese (1847) speaks of heaven's "overspreadings and supportings". The Proceedings of the Lake Superior Mining Institute (1913) waits on "the pump-house supportings". Plain support does the same job in everyday prose, so this noun reads as either technical or deliberately elevated.

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