toeing

Pluraltoeings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of toe.

   He was toeing the starting mark just as the gun went off.

   Reporters accused the senator of toeing the party line too closely.

   Note

   Every sense of the verb toe passes through this form. A carpenter toeing a board fastens it with a nail driven at a near-45-degree angle. A golfer toeing a shot mishits it off the toe of the club. Someone toeing the line comes fully up to a mark, and so conforms. Only the footwork noun takes a plural, toeings.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Light, nimble footwork performed on the toes.

   For all his toeings and flourishes on the dance floor, he still could not keep time with the band.

   Her precise toeing across the stage drew quiet admiration from the audience.

   Similarfootwork

   Note

   A word with a curl of the lip in it. George Meredith's The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871) lists toeings alongside Spanish fopperies and French phrases, the affected graces of a suitor serenading under moonlit windows. In the plural, as there, it suggests a string of showy steps put on for display, closer to mannerism than to skill.

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