torturing

Pluraltorturings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of torture.

   Soldiers stood accused of torturing prisoners during the long conflict.

   Torturing detainees for confessions is banned under international law.

   Note

   The verb form keeps the transitive pull of torture and takes a direct object, as in torturing prisoners. That is the quickest way to tell it from the noun for an act of torture, which has the same spelling. The noun needs of before its object (the torturing of detainees) and can be made plural as torturings. In spelling, the silent e of torture drops before -ing.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act or practice of deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain on someone.

   The torturing of detainees drew condemnation from human rights groups worldwide.

   Survivors described the systematic torturing carried out inside the prison.

   Similartorment, abuse

   Note

   The countable noun is most at home in the plural, inside a list of cruelties. Walter Scott, in Tales of My Landlord (1816), strings torturings among hornings, banishments and hangings. C. S. Lewis pairs burnings and torturings in The Horse and His Boy (1954). Barbara Ehrenreich, in The Guardian in 2009, sets torturings beside renderings and detentions. The plural turns a single practice into a catalog of separate abuses.

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