blanketing

blanketing

1. present participle of blanket

blanketing (plural blanketings)

1. (uncountable, countable) Cloth for making blankets.
   • 1690, uncredited translator, The History of Scotland by George Buchanan, London: Awnsham Churchil, Book I, p. 23,

     But, now-a-days, many of them wear their Apparel of a dark brown colour, almost like Heath, that so, lying in the Heath-bushes, they might not, in the day-time, be discovered by their Cloaths. Being rather loosly happ’d, than closely covered, with this sort of Blanketing, they endure the fiercest weather […]

   • 1882, W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe, London: Chappell, Act II, p. 30,

     Then the blanketing tickles—you feel like mixed pickles—so terribly sharp is the pricking,

     And you’re hot, and you’re cross, and you tumble and toss till there’s nothing ’twixt you and the ticking.

   • 1908, Henry de Vere Stacpoole, The Blue Lagoon, London: T. Fisher Unwin, Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 4, pp. 197-198,

     Then Dick lay down in the dried ferns and covered himself with a piece of the striped flannel which they used for blanketing […]

   • 1922, E. O. Mousley, The Secrets of a Kuttite, London: John Lane, Part 2, Chapter 8, p. 192,

     Along the face of these limestone bluffs one observed a queer phenomenon of splashed yellow rocks, seemingly spilled from some gigantic cauldron, dried and hung out like blanketings in the morning sun.

2. (countable) A layer of something that covers like a blanket.

   blanketings of snow

   • 1914, Saki, When William Came, London: John Lane, Chapter 4, p. 64,

     Did one want grilled mushrooms, English fashion, they were there, black and moist and sizzling, and extremely edible; did one desire mushrooms à la Russe, they appeared, blanched and cool and toothsome under their white blanketing of sauce.

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, Chapter 3, p. 43,

     The stream made loops of water round their ankles. But none of that could show clearly through the swaddlings and blanketings of the Cambridge night.

3. (uncountable, countable) The act or punishment of tossing in a blanket.
   • 1728, Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, London: A. Dodd, Book 2, p. 22,

     Himself among the storied chiefs he spies,

     As from the blanket high in air he flies,

     And oh! (he cry'd) what street, what lane but knows

     Our purgings, pumpings, blanketings and blows?

   • 1755, Tobias Smollett (translator), The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, London: A. Millar, Volume I, Book 3, Chapter 5, p. 108,

     […] that affair of the blanketing happened to thee, for the fault thou wast guilty of […]

4. (nautical, slang) A manoeuvre in which one vessel covers or becalms another with its sails.[1]
   • 1894, Edward Sullivan et al., Yachting, London: Longmans, Green, Volume I, Chapter , p. 144,

     The latter hailed for water, and was so much more nimble in coming round, that she managed to get on ‘Gwendolin’s’ weather before she had gathered way, and gave her such a complete blanketing as left her almost in irons.