Word.ws English Dictionary

dialing

dialing is the present participle and gerund of dial.

Noun

dialing (plural dialings)

  1. The act by which a number is dialed.
    • Even with that many votes, a few thousand errant dialings could affect the results.2008 April 12, Edward Wyatt, “As Callers, ‘Idol’ Fans Often Lack Real Talent”, in New York Times
  2. (archaic) The art of constructing dials.
  3. The science of measuring time by use of a dial.
  4. A method of surveying, especially in mines, in which the bearings of the courses, or the angles which they make with each other, are determined by means of the circumferentor; the use of a miner's dial.

Meaning of dial

Verb

dial (third-person singular simple present dials, present participle (US) dialing or (UK) dialling, simple past and past participle (US) dialed or (UK) dialled)

  1. (transitive) To control or select something with a dial, or (figuratively) as if with a dial.
    • The lead guitarist for the rock band Spinal Tap dialed his amplifier to 11.
  2. (transitive) To select a number, or to call someone, on a telephone, regardless of whether a physical dial is present.
    • In an emergency dial 999.
  3. (intransitive) To use a dial or a telephone.
    • Please be careful when dialling.
  4. (transitive) To initiate a connection to a remote computer service such as a database.
    • The application failed when attempting to dial the Postgres server, because there were too many open connections.
  5. (dated, intransitive) To use a dial-up modem to connect a personal computer to the Internet.
    • I always check my guestbook when I dial, just in case anyone saw my Web site.

See all 13 meanings of dial

Forms of dialing

Verb
alternative formdialling
Noun
pluraldialings

Words formed from dialing

Phrases with dialing

3 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about dialing

What does dialing mean?
Dialing means the act by which a number is dialed.
What is dialing the present participle and gerund of?
Dialing is the present participle and gerund of dial.
What part of speech is dialing?
Dialing is a noun.
What is the plural of dialing?
The plural of dialing is dialings.

Words near dialing in the dictionary

  1. dialgebra
  2. dialgebras
  3. dialid
  4. dialids
  5. dialin
  6. dialing
  7. dialing back
  8. dialing down
  9. dialing down a notch
  10. dialing in
  11. dialing into

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dialing (page history and authors); dial (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dialing.wav.

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