Word.ws English Dictionary

bailing

/ˈbeɪlɪŋ/

bailing is the present participle and gerund of bail.

Meaning of bail

Verb

bail (third-person singular simple present bails, present participle bailing, simple past and past participle bailed)

  1. To secure the release of an arrested person by providing bail.
    • For the first time, the arrests broadened beyond payments to police, with a Ministry of Defence employee and a member of the Armed forces held by police before also being bailed to a date in May.2012 February 11, David Barrett, “Rupert Murdoch moves to reassure Sun staff after arrests”, in The Telegraph, UK
  2. To release a person under such guarantee.
  3. To hand over personal property to be held temporarily by another as a bailment.
    • to bail cloth to a tailor to be made into a garment; to bail goods to a carrier
  4. (intransitive, transitive) To remove (water) from a boat by scooping it out.
    • to bail water out of a boat
  5. (transitive) To remove water from (a boat) by scooping it out.
    • to bail a boat
  6. To set free; to deliver; to release.
    • Ne none there was to reskue her, ne none to baile.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 7

See all 26 meanings of bail

Noun

bailing (plural bailings)

  1. The act by which something is bailed.
    • He took a bucket and bailed the muddy stuff out right to the bottom, and let it fill up to be again bailed out. After three bailings the water came in cold, sweet, and pure as crystal.1903, Ernest Thompson Seton, Two Little Savages

Forms of bailing

pluralbailings

Phrases with bailing

Words that rhyme with bailing

9 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bailing

What does bailing mean?
Bailing means the act by which something is bailed.
What is bailing the present participle and gerund of?
Bailing is the present participle and gerund of bail.
What part of speech is bailing?
Bailing is a noun.
How do you pronounce bailing?
Bailing is pronounced /ˈbeɪlɪŋ/.
What is the plural of bailing?
The plural of bailing is bailings.

Words near bailing in the dictionary

  1. bailiffs-errant
  2. bailiffship
  3. bailiffships
  4. bailiffwick
  5. bailiffwicks
  6. bailing
  7. bailing on
  8. bailing out
  9. bailing out on
  10. bailing up
  11. bailings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bailing (page history and authors); bail (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bailing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bailing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.