wetting

Pluralwettings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of applying water or another liquid to something so that it becomes wet.

   Repeated wetting and drying weakened the wooden beam over time.

   A quick wetting of the brush kept the paint from drying out.

   Similarmoistening, dampening, soaking

   Oppositedrying

   Note

   The act can be counted as well as named, so you can speak of one wetting or several. George Adolphus Wigney's An Elementary Dictionary (1838) writes of "the first two or three wettings or steepings of grain" in malting, using wetting as a plain equivalent of steeping. In everyday use it often pairs with its reverse, as in repeated wetting and drying.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of wet.

   The gardener is wetting the soil before planting the seeds.

   A fine drizzle was wetting the windows all morning.

   Note

   The -ing form doubles the final t: wet, wetting. It carries every sense of the verb, with or without an object. You can be wetting the soil or wetting the bed, and solder can be wetting a metal surface. Used as a gerund, it shades into the noun for the act, which can also be counted and made plural as wettings.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act of accidentally passing urine onto or into something.

   Frequent wetting during the night may point to a medical problem.

   The nurse noted the patient's wetting in the overnight chart.

4. 4
   adjective

   Causing something to become wet, especially by helping a liquid spread across a surface.

   Manufacturers add a wetting agent so the coating spreads evenly.

   A good wetting compound lets water flow across the waxy leaf.

5. 5
   noundialectalMulticultural London EnglishUScountable

   A murder, or an attack that leaves the victim seriously injured.

   Detectives tied the wetting to a long feud between two crews.

   He was sentenced for his role in the wetting of an informant.

   Similarkilling, murder, stabbing

   Note

   This is street slang in both US speech and Multicultural London English, formed from the slang verb wet, "to kill or seriously injure." It turns up in song lyrics: Russ and Taze's "Anti" (2018) boasts of a name earned through a string of them. Outside such settings it sounds menacing or borrowed. In ordinary talk a wetting is making something wet, so the context must make the violence clear.

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