weathering

Pluralweatherings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The mechanical or chemical breakdown of rocks in place, caused by weather and other natural forces.

   Chemical weathering dissolves limestone, carving out caves over thousands of years.

   Geologists study how weathering shapes desert landscapes into towers and arches.

   Note

   A geologist's term with a precise boundary: weathering breaks rock where it stands, in situ, while erosion carries the pieces away. That is why the two are so often named together, as in Lawrence Martin's "weathering and stream erosion" (1965). Specialists qualify it by process, as in mechanical or chemical weathering, or by setting, as in continental weathering when the subject is what rivers deliver to the oceans.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of weather.

   The ship was weathering the storm with its sails reefed tight.

   The coastline is slowly weathering into jagged, broken shapes.

   Note

   The -ing form of a verb that pulls in opposite directions. Rocks that are weathering are breaking down, while a ship or a firm weathering a storm is coming through it without much damage. In sailing, weathering a headland means passing it to windward. As a gerund it shares its spelling with the nouns, so "weathering of the cliffs" can be read either way. The surrounding sentence settles which is meant.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The action of weather on objects left exposed to it, including fading, cracking, and wear.

   Decades of weathering had stripped the paint from the wooden shutters.

   The bronze plaque showed heavy weathering after years on the coast.

   Similarwear, erosion

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A slight slope given to a nearly horizontal surface so that it sheds water rather than letting it collect.

   The architect specified a weathering on the cornice to protect the brickwork below.

   Builders cut a gentle weathering into the stone cap to shed rainfall.

   Note

   A builder's and architect's word for a feature you can point to, cut into stone or specify on a drawing, typically on a sill, coping or cornice. Don't confuse it with wear from exposure: here the word names the protection, not the damage. It belongs to surfaces that are almost level, where only a slight fall is needed to keep water moving off them instead of soaking in.

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