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spreading

verbnounnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈspɹɛdɪŋ//
  • //ˈspɹiːdɪŋ//

The act by which something is spread.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of spreadpresent participle and gerund of spread

    And so, unfortunately, this great and spreading network of railways, that recently showed such promise as a major instrument in the modern development of China, must be left for the time being in the melting-pot of Armageddon.

    As towns continue to grow, replanting vegetation has become a form of urban utopia and green roofs are spreading fast. Last year 1m square metres of plant-covered roofing was built in France, as much as in the US, and 10 times more than in Germany, the pioneer in this field.

Etymology

By surface analysis, spread + -ing.

noun

  1. 1

    The act by which something is spread.

    Small numbers [of meadowlarks] remain on farms in the southern counties throughout the winter, usually relying on fresh manure spreadings for food when snow covers the fields.

noun

  1. 1

    The act of spreading (speedreading).

    Chief among the strategies exploiting this rule was "spreading" (a combination of "speed" and "reading"), where debaters would rattle off arguments at a blistering pace. Their speeches often exceeded 300 words per minute. (A conversational pace is about 60 per minute.)

    The NSDA currently boasts more than one hundred and fifty thousand student participants (per affiliated team rosters), many of whom compete in Lincoln–Douglas or policy. The activities are distinct in structure—policy is two-on-two—but they operate similarly on the national circuit, and involve spreading and other experimental tactics.

Etymology

Blend of speed + reading.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of spreadpresent participle and gerund of spread

Forms

plural
spreadings
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).