underscoring

Pluralunderscorings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of underscore.

   The coach was underscoring the importance of practice before every game.

   Underscoring each weak argument made the essay much easier to revise.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (was underscoring the point). On its own it works as a verbal noun (Underscoring every error slowed her down). Either way it keeps a direct object, because both meanings of underscore are transitive: drawing a line under text and stressing an idea. The same spelling also names the mark itself, the noun for an underline.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A line placed beneath a word or stretch of text; an underline.

   The editor added an underscoring beneath each term that needed emphasis.

   A bold underscoring ran below the chapter title on the printed page.

   Similarunderline, underlining

   Note

   A countable noun for the marks themselves, so it takes a plural: underscorings. In Jane Toombs's Nightingale Man (2002), a character complains that someone "underscored whole passages" and that he "can't abide reading a book with underscorings in it." Verb and noun sit side by side there, and the noun names the lines a reader leaves behind. Unlike the verb form, it takes no object and here carries only the literal sense.

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