voyaging

Pluralvoyagings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of voyage.

   Polynesian navigators were voyaging between distant islands long before modern instruments existed.

   Probes voyaging beyond the planets still send back faint signals.

   Note

   Usually there is no object, so the route follows a preposition: voyaging across an ocean, between islands, beyond the planets. The noun voyage leans toward travel by ship, but the verb asks only that the journey be long, so space probes go voyaging as readily as canoes. The same spelling also serves the noun for travel itself, with a plural, voyagings.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The making of journeys, especially long ones by sea, or the act of going on a voyage.

   Ocean voyaging has changed enormously since the days of sail.

   The book collects letters he wrote during his long voyagings in the South Seas.

   Similartravel, seafaring, sailing

   Note

   The plural gathers repeated journeys into one seafaring career: in Melville's Moby-Dick, Ahab "in the course of his continual voyagings" must often have seen such a sight before. Used without a plural, the word names the practice itself, as in ocean voyaging, which has changed enormously since the days of sail.

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