texting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The use of a mobile phone to send written messages to other people.

   Texting has largely replaced phone calls among younger users.

   She finished her report between bouts of texting with her sister.

   Similarmessaging

   Note

   A blend of text and messaging, the two halves of text messaging squeezed into one word. As the name of the activity it is usually uncountable: texting has replaced phone calls. It can also be counted when it means a single episode, though English more often reaches for a phrase like bouts of texting or a round of texting.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of text.

   They were texting each other long after midnight.

   Stop texting and pay attention to the road.

   Note

   One -ing form doing two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (they were texting), and in noun positions it works as a gerund (texting while driving). The verb behind it can take an object or go without one, so you can be texting a friend or simply texting all evening. When it names the activity in general, it shades into the noun for the habit, which shares its spelling.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The words set to a particular piece of music, as distinct from the melody itself.

   The composer adapted an old poem as the texting for his new choral work.

   Singers studied the texting carefully before the first full rehearsal.

   Similarwords, lyrics

   Note

   A musicologist's term, and one that takes a plural comfortably. Oscar George Sonneck, writing in The Musical Quarterly (1915), discusses the textings supplied for Alleluias and for melismas in Offertories, meaning separate sets of words fitted to existing chant. Outside writing about music, readers will expect the phone-messaging noun, so let the musical context make this sense clear.

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