telescoping
telescoping is the present participle and gerund of telescope.
Noun
telescoping (countable and uncountable, plural telescopings)
- The act of extending or contracting in the manner of a telescope.
- As the word suggests, "telescoping" is the forcing of one vehicle into its immediate neighbour, and is caused by the heavy steel underframe of one coach rising slightly and sliding over the frame of the next, much in the same way that two planks being pushed end to end might suddenly ride one over...1940 November, H. A. Robinson, “Devices to Reduce Collision Results”, in Railway Magazine, page 580
- Mr Sadleir's prose style recalls Whistler's at every turn. There are the same terrific and nonchalant telescopings of continents and centuries, and the same honeyed omniscience, kind but firm, and the same want of an innate sense of proportion […]2000, Walter Sickert, Anna Gruetzner Robins, Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art, page 507
- Extending limited data to make up for gaps
- The outstanding feature of the nineteenth-century lists in relation to the modern ones is their incompleteness. This incompleteness might suggest telescoping, […]
- Charges of telescoping and other forms of shortening the roster of former kings in oral cultures perhaps ought in at least some cases to be directed against scholars and others who have compiled such faulty lists […]1979, Joseph Miller, Kings, Lists, and History in Kasanje - History in Africa, page 67
- A telescopic action.
- intermediate stages of telescoping of the parts together
- The temporal displacement of an event in which people perceive recent events as being more remote than they are and distant events as being more recent than they are.
- The telescoping effect is divided into backward telescoping and forward telescoping.
- Here we will show that telescoping is a result of the way the question is asked rather than a result of the compression of time.1989 November, David C. Rubin, Alan D. Baddeley, “Telescoping is not time compression: A model”, in Memory & Cognition, volume 17, number 6, →DOI, page 653
Meaning of telescope
Verb
telescope (third-person singular simple present telescopes, present participle telescoping, simple past and past participle telescoped)
- To extend or contract in the manner of a telescope.
- Hugo rose to his full height, which was triple that of Grunt Buggely’s, even without his neck telescoped.1988, Barry B[rookes] Longyear, Naked Came the Robot, New York, N.Y.: Popular Library, →ISBN, page 155
- To slide or pass one within another, after the manner of the sections of a small telescope or spyglass.
- To come into collision, as railway cars, in such a manner that one runs into another.
- To collapse, via cancellation.
Adjective
telescoping (not comparable)
- Synonym of telescopable.
- Synonyms:
- telescopable
Synonyms of telescoping
Forms of telescoping
| plural | telescopings |
|---|
Words formed from telescoping
Questions about telescoping
- What does telescoping mean?
- Telescoping means synonym of telescopable.
- What is telescoping the present participle and gerund of?
- Telescoping is the present participle and gerund of telescope.
- What part of speech is telescoping?
- Telescoping can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near telescoping in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: telescoping (page history and authors); telescope (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: “telescoping.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/telescoping. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.