Word.ws English Dictionary

dewing

dewing is the present participle and gerund of dew.

Noun

dewing (uncountable)

  1. The formation of dew.
    • […] the dewing of a metal plate when breathed upon, the dewing of the outside of a glass when very cold water is poured into it, […]1852, Francis Bacon, An Explanatory Version of Lord Bacon's Novum Organum, page 26
  2. Other condensation (of water vapor or other gases) physically analogous to dew formation.
    • The fact remains that, for a given gas composition, it is the metal temperature that determines whether or not dewing (and hence corrosion) takes place.1960 February, “Letters to the Editor”, in Trains Illustrated, page 128

Meaning of dew

Verb

dew (third-person singular simple present dews, present participle dewing, simple past and past participle dewed)

  1. (transitive) To wet with, or as if with, dew; to moisten.
    • The grasses grew / A little ranker since they dewed them so.1887, Andrew B. Saxton, “Sunken Graves”, in The Century
  2. (intransitive) To deposit dew.
    • The former [substances extremely attentuated, or in a filamentous and downly state] collect dew copiously, while the latter [solids] so rarely indicate its presence, even when it is dewing freely on contiguous substances, that some observers have doubted whether it ever happened, and have been...1831, The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for ..., page 80

See all 9 meanings of dew

Verb

dewing (third-person singular simple present dewings, present participle dewinging, simple past and past participle dewinged)

  1. (transitive) To remove wings or a wing from.
    • the seed with wings attached withstood storage very significantly better than dewinged seed.1954, Philip Carman Wakeley, Planting the Southern Pines, page 53
    • The birds were then dewinged, debeaked, and skinned for tissue sample removal.1974, Russell F. Reidinger, Jr. and D. Glen Crabtree, “Organochlorine Residues in Golden Eagles, United States—March 1964-July 1971”, in Pesticides Monitoring Journal, volumes 8-9, page 37

Proper noun capitalized: Dewing

Dewing

  1. A surname.

Forms of dewing

third-person singular presentdewings
present participledewinging
past participledewinged
pastdewinged

Origin of dewing

From de- + wing.

Questions about dewing

What does dewing mean?
Dewing means the formation of dew.
What is dewing the present participle and gerund of?
Dewing is the present participle and gerund of dew.
What part of speech is dewing?
Dewing can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.

Words near dewing in the dictionary

  1. dewily
  2. dewindtite
  3. DeWine
  4. DeWines
  5. dewiness
  6. dewing
  7. dewinged
  8. dewinging
  9. dewings
  10. dewire
  11. dewired

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dewing (page history and authors); Dewing (page history and authors); dew (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: “dewing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dewing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.