inking

inking is the present participle and gerund of ink.

Noun

inking (countable and uncountable, plural inkings)

An application of ink.
- In a rotary printing-machine, a cylinder carrying a single relief design, means for imparting successive complete inkings to said design […]1900, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, page 175
Work done by an inker, one kind of commercial artist
Inputting text or drawings into a computer, tablet, or similar apparatus using a stylus.
A defensive activity where ink is released by squids, cuttlefish, etc.
- Mucus-rich ink is supposedly a dangerous or annoying substance that interferes with fish gills and some cephalopods react adversely to their own inkings in small containers or in the lab. The blue-ringed octopus Hapalochlaena lunulata has tetrodotoxin, the deadly toxin it also releases in a bite...2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 15 Mar 2023

ink (third-person singular simple present inks, present participle inking, simple past and past participle inked)

(transitive) To apply ink to; to cover or smear with ink.
- A plain impression is obtained by pressing the bulb of the finger, with the plane of the nail parallel to the plane of the plate, on the inked plate and then on the paper in the same manner.1919, R. H. Leigh, How to Obtain Good Finger Prints, third edition, U.S. Navy Department Bureau of Navigation, page 1
(transitive) To sign (a contract or similar document).
- Before Musk, America’s space industry was moribund. In 2011, NASA mothballed the last space shuttle, after inking a deal with SpaceX to make uncrewed cargo resupply runs to the International Space Station (ISS).2021 December 13, Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, Alejandro de la Garza, “Elon Musk: Person of the Year 2021”, in Time Magazine, archived from the original on 13 Dec 2021
Synonyms:

endorse, initial, inscribe, subscribe
(transitive) To apply a tattoo to (someone).
(intransitive) to eject ink (sense 3)

plural	inkings

What does inking mean?: Inking means an application of ink.
What is inking the present participle and gerund of?: Inking is the present participle and gerund of ink.
What part of speech is inking?: Inking is a noun.
What is the plural of inking?: The plural of inking is inkings.

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