shelving
shelving adjective: sloping (as opposed to horizontally flat or vertically upright). Also the present participle and gerund of shelve.
Adjective
shelving (comparative more shelving, superlative most shelving)
- Sloping (as opposed to horizontally flat or vertically upright).
- Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, / And built so shelving that one cannot climb it / Without apparent hazard of his life.c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III, Scene 1
- We still continued winding round Skiddaw, the sides of which are every where rather shelving, than steep.1789, William Gilpin, Observations relative chiefly to picturesque beauty, made in the year 1776, London: R. Blamire, Volume 2, Section 36, p. 157
Noun
shelving (countable and uncountable, plural shelvings)
- Shelves collectively.
- a shelving unit
- There is ample shelving in the basement.
- The side-rails of a cart or waggon.
- So, creaking and creaking, and the shelvins skirling under the weight of their load, they passed that danger point, the carts plodded into motion again […]1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 47
- A sloping surface.
- […] the way was all along set so full of Snares, Traps, Gins, and Nets here, and so full of Pits, Pitfalls, deep holes and shelvings down there, that had it now been dark […] had he had a thousand souls, they had in reason been cast away;1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, London: Nath. Ponder, page 82
- [The little room] had more corners in it than the brain of an obstinate man; was full of mad closets, into which nothing could be put that was not specially invented and made for that purpose; had mysterious shelvings and bulk-heads […]1844, Charles Dickens, chapter 35, in Martin Chuzzlewit, page 412
Also used as
shelving is also the present participle and gerund of shelve.
Examples of shelving in a sentence
- The town of Abda is built upon the top and down the steeply shelving face of an isolated rocky spur,1914, T. E. Lawrence, chapter 5, in The Wilderness of Zin,, London: Jonathan Cape, published 1936, page 109:
- […] a gently shelving plain led to a huge forest through which there were tracks that could safely be followed.1987, Edward Rutherfurd, Sarum, London: Century, page 6:
- dry light sand, blown from higher shelvings, striped the dark wet edges of the shore1919, Henry Blake Fuller, chapter 29, in Bertram Cope’s Year, Chicago: R.F. Seymour, page 276:
- Frau Von Zeck settled her powerful chins upon the coarse shelving of her Wagnerian breasts […]1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, New York: The Modern Library, Part 2, Chapter 24, p. 345:
Synonyms of shelving
Forms of shelving
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more shelving |
| superlative | most shelving |
| Noun | |
| plural | shelvings |
Origin of shelving
By surface analysis, shelve + -ing.
Words formed from shelving
Questions about shelving
- What does shelving mean?
- Shelving means sloping (as opposed to horizontally flat or vertically upright).
- How do you use shelving in a sentence?
- The town of Abda is built upon the top and down the steeply shelving face of an isolated rocky spur,
- What part of speech is shelving?
- Shelving can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near shelving in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shelving (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: “shelving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shelving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.