trailing

Pluraltrailings

1. 1
   adjective

   Following along behind, especially when attached to something and pulled along after it.

   A trailing rope from the boat snagged on the dock.

   The toddler clutched a trailing blanket as she crossed the room.

   Similardangling, hanging

   Note

   Beyond ropes and blankets, the adjective covers whatever comes at the tail end of a sequence. It describes the trailing railcars at the back of a train, trailing comments after a passage, and, in text and code, trailing whitespace: stray spaces at the end of a line, as in "no trailing whitespace characters." It is not comparable. Something trails or it does not, so "more trailing" is not idiomatic.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of trail.

   The detectives were trailing the suspect across three states.

   Vines were trailing down from the old balcony.

   Note

   The -ing form carries both halves of the verb. Used transitively, it takes an object: trailing a suspect, trailing a coat through the mud, or trailing a report or a show by releasing a preview ahead of it. Used intransitively, it acts on nothing, as when skirts and vines simply go trailing. The same spelling serves as a gerund and settles into the "following behind" adjective.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A loose length or streak of fabric or other material drawn out behind something or hanging down from it.

   Every gust of wind lifted a pale trailing of gauze from the bride's veil.

   Wet trailings of seaweed clung to the hull when the boat was hauled ashore.

   Similarstrand, wisp, streamer, streak

   Note

   A noun most at home in the plural, naming the streaks and stray lengths something leaves in its wake. It works in literary and practical writing alike. Mary E. Wilkins, in The Portion of Labor (1901), pictures roots "advancing with wide trailings, and rustlings as of green draperies." Regina S. Baraban and Joseph F. Durocher's Successful Restaurant Design (2010) warns of dispensers that leave "trailings of soap" on the counter.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of railway tracks or points, converging in the direction a train travels, so the lines merge as the train moves forward.

   The crew reset the trailing points after the freight cars had passed.

   A trailing crossover let the two lines combine safely beyond the platform.

   Oppositefacing

   Note

   A trackwork term that makes sense only beside its opposite, facing points. In a trailing arrangement, a train running in the normal direction passes from a branch or siding onto the main line instead of being split off it. The word attaches to points, crossovers and whole junctions. R. S. McNaught, writing in Railway in 1955, describes a branch that "will shortly join our main line by means of a trailing junction."

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