uniting

Pluralunitings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of unite.

   The treaty is uniting nations that once fought bitter wars.

   Uniting the rival factions proved harder than the negotiators expected.

   Note

   Both uses of the verb meet in this form. It can take an object, as in uniting the rival factions, or stand alone when things come together, as in nations uniting against a threat. After a form of be it marks action in progress. As a gerund it heads a noun phrase but still takes a direct object, which separates it from the noun for the act, where of comes before what is joined.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of bringing separate things together into one, or the forming of a union.

   Like separate threads twisted together to form a single rope.

   The uniting of the thirteen colonies created an entirely new nation.

   A formal uniting of the two churches took decades to negotiate.

   Similarunification, union, merger, amalgamation

   Oppositedivision, separation

   Note

   Here the verb's motion survives inside a noun. Union names the finished result, while uniting names the process, and it can be counted and made plural. James S. Wolfe's A Song of Faith (2008) builds on that contrast: "There are no unions, only unitings and separations and reunitings." In ordinary prose it usually takes of before what is joined, as in the uniting of two churches.

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