telescopings

Noun

telescoping (countable and uncountable, plural telescopings)

1. 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
2. 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
3. A telescopic action.
   • intermediate stages of telescoping of the parts together
4. 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.

See all 5 meanings of telescoping