visiting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of visit.

   They are visiting several coastal towns during their trip.

   Visiting friends in other countries can be expensive but rewarding.

   Note

   The -ing form of visit does three jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (they are visiting). As a gerund it heads a phrase (visiting friends abroad). Placed before a noun it works like an adjective, as in Stirling Everard's line in Railway Magazine (1951) about "the visiting U.S.A. 2-8-0s of the war." Only the gerund overlaps with the countable noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of going to see and spend time with a person, or of calling on a particular place.

   Hospital visiting often lifts the spirits of long-term patients.

   The visiting of distant relatives was a cherished part of the holidays.

   Similarvisitation

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun counts, so it can take a plural: visitings. That plural has long reached past social calls. Shakespeare's Macbeth asks that "no compunctious visitings of nature" shake his purpose, meaning pangs of conscience that arrive unbidden. Letitia Landon (1837) wonders at "strange visitings" in the midnight hours. The sociable sense survives too: Joseph A. Conforti (2003) quotes "the convivial visitings" of a North Carolina Sabbath.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2