titling

Pluraltitlings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of title.

   The editor was titling each section before sending the draft to print.

   Titling a poem can be harder than writing it.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. In a progressive (was titling each section) it is a verb with a direct object, because title is transitive. As a gerund (Titling a poem is hard) it heads a noun phrase but still keeps its object. With the in front and of after it, it has become the noun for the act. The unrelated bird name titling has the same spelling but a different root.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Assigning a title to something, or applying a book's title to its spine in printed or stamped lettering.

   The titling of each volume followed a strict house style.

   The publisher charged extra for the gold titling on the spine.

   Similarnaming, lettering

   Note

   Bookbinders use the word for the lettering itself as well as the act. In Philip Smith's New Directions in Bookbinding (1974), the titling is onlaid on the spine leather. Titling styles change over time, so they can date a book. Archibald Swinton's Report of the Trial of Alexander Humphreys (1839) exposes a forgery because it shows a mode of titling that was introduced only in 1806.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A legal right to a property; the holding of a title to it.

   Disputes over the titling delayed the sale for months.

   Proper titling ensures the new owner can defend the claim in court.

   Similarownership

   Note

   Land titling is the formal registration of ownership. In that phrase the word names a process rather than a single right: Diana Hunt's 1976 study of individual land titling in Mbeere speaks of "pressure for titling" and "momentum for titling". Older usage was looser. An 1888 Handbook for Travelers in Surrey says that squatters' only titling to empty cottages was holding the key.

4. 4
   SayTIT-ling/ˈtɪtlɪŋ/

   nouncountable

   A small brown songbird of European hedgerows, also called the hedge sparrow or dunnock (Prunella modularis).

   A titling slipped through the hedge, flicking its wings as it went.

   Each spring a pair of titlings nested in the garden hedge.

   Similardunnock

   Note

   The name looks homemade, as if it were tit ("small bird") plus the diminutive -ling. It probably came from Norse, though: Old Norse titlingr meant "sparrow", and Icelandic titlingr means "tit sparrow". It has been in English since the 16th century. George Graves's British Ornithology (1821) offered another explanation: in many parts of the country, the bird's winter call, "tit, tit", gave it the name.

5. 5
   SayTIT-ling/ˈtɪtlɪŋ/

   nouncountable

   A small brown songbird of open grassland and moorland, the meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis).

   A titling sang high above the moor before parachuting down to the grass.

   Several titlings flushed from the rough pasture as we walked.

   Note

   The name that belongs to the hedge sparrow was also given to a second small brown bird, so only context tells the two apart. Folklore gathered around this one. "Eagle shooting in the Alps", in The Sportsman's Cabinet (1833), reports a belief in the North that the cuckoo was always attended by the titling, or "pippet", which had been its stepmother and nurse from the egg.

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