warming

Pluralwarmings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of warm.

   The afternoon sun was warming the stones along the path.

   Warming the milk slowly keeps it from scorching.

   Note

   A form that does two jobs: after be it builds the progressive (the sun was warming the stones), and on its own it heads a noun phrase (warming the milk slowly). Like the verb, it can take an object or stand without one: the room is warming, or she is warming up to the plan. It descends from the Old English participle wærmiġende, while the temperature-rise noun comes from a separate noun, wærming.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A slight rise in temperature.

   There was a noticeable warming in the cabin once the embers caught.

   Researchers recorded a small warming of the ocean surface that spring.

   Similarheating

   Oppositecooling

   Note

   An old noun in its own right, not one built later from the verb. Old English already had wærming, which passed through Middle English warmyng into the modern word. Its sibling, the -ing form of warm, descends from a different Old English word, the participle wærmiġende, and the two lines met only in Middle English spelling. As a true noun it takes an article and a plural: a warming, warmings.

3. 3
   nounslangcountable

   A beating or thrashing.

   The bully promised him a warming if he breathed a word to the teacher.

   He came home with a black eye after a proper warming from the older lads.

   Similarbeating, thrashing, hiding, pasting

   Note

   Slang that turns heat into punishment, and the punishment usually comes as something given. Harry Goulding's A Grimsby Life (2017) remembers a man who would catch the boy in the act and give him "a good warming" with his hard hand. Give someone a warming, often with good in front, is the natural frame. Keep it to casual speech. In neutral writing, beating or thrashing says the same thing plainly.

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