foxing

foxing is the present participle and gerund of fox.

Noun

foxing (countable and uncountable, plural foxings)

The discoloration of printed material with brown marks.

Synonyms:

measles, mealiness
A band of material joining the upper of a shoe to the sole.
Crafty or wily behavior.
- "Here, wake up!" cried Silas. "None of your foxin'! Wake up! D'ye hear?" He shook him roughly by the shoulder, but the boy still slumbered on.1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
(slang) Pretending to be asleep or unconscious.

fox (third-person singular simple present foxes, present participle foxing, simple past and past participle foxed)

(transitive) To trick, fool or outwit (someone) by cunning or ingenuity.
- I see a number of gallants every where, whoſe incomes come in yearely by ſet numbers, but runne out daily, ſans number. […] And when I ſee them often foxed, me thinke the Proverbe ſutes thoſe ſutes, what is the fox but his caſe? I ſhould thinke them to be Eutrapelus his enemies, whom he cloathed...1680, Arthur Warwick, Spare-Minutes, or Resolved Meditations and Remediated Resolutions
To sham, to dissemble.
- He was not foxing. No, no: he was sick really.1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC
(transitive) To confuse or baffle (someone).
- This crossword puzzle has completely foxed me.
(intransitive) To act slyly or craftily.
(dated, transitive) To cheat or rob.
- Have you any news of Miriam? As I have had no reply to my delicately worded epistle, I can only presume that you foxed me with the wrong address, and that you are yourself already engaged to be married to her.Quoted in 2000, John Lewes, Jock Lewes: Co-founder of the SAS (page 132)
(intransitive) To discolour paper. Fox marks are spots on paper caused by humidity. (See foxing.)
- The pages of the book show distinct foxing.

plural	foxings

What does foxing mean?: Foxing means the discoloration of printed material with brown marks.
What is foxing the present participle and gerund of?: Foxing is the present participle and gerund of fox.
What part of speech is foxing?: Foxing is a noun.
What is the plural of foxing?: The plural of foxing is foxings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: foxing (page history and authors); fox (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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