waiting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of wait.

   The crowd stood waiting outside the stadium gates for hours.

   Waiting quietly, she watched the door for any sign of movement.

   Note

   One spelling does three jobs here. It is the progressive verb (your guest has been waiting), an adjective before a noun (the waiting car), and the gerund naming the activity itself. Its object normally comes through for, as in waiting for you, because the bare transitive use is now archaic. In American English the same form also covers restaurant service, as in waiting tables.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of staying or remaining somewhere in expectation of something.

   Like the pause between casting a line and feeling the first tug.

   The hardest part of the journey was the waiting at the border crossing.

   Hours of waiting in the hospital corridor stretched her nerves thin.

   Note

   Expectation can become a thing in itself, which is why this noun can take an article. Richard Watson Gilder's The New Day (1876) speaks of "an awful waiting in the earth," making suspense almost a presence. More often it stays uncountable and leans on a preposition, as in waiting for news or hours of waiting. In waiting room, the gerund names what the place is for.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The providing of attendance or personal service to another, especially in a formal household.

   The gentleman in waiting accompanied the prince to every state dinner.

   Two maids remained in waiting throughout the duchess's long illness.

   Similarattendance, service

   Note

   Here service is something judged by its quality. In George Eliot's Middlemarch (1872), a gentleman takes "excellent waiting at table" for granted, alongside green glasses for hock. At table is its natural partner, and adjectives grade it as they would any service. Its living relative is the American restaurant use carried by the verb form: waiting tables.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4