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POUNDING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of pounding (delivering repeated heavy blows)
Example:
the pounding of feet on the hallway
Synonyms:
hammer; hammering; pound; pounding
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("pounding" is a kind of...):
blow (a powerful stroke with the fist or a weapon)
Derivation:
pound (hit hard with the hand, fist, or some heavy instrument)
Sense 2
Meaning:
An instance of rapid strong pulsation (of the heart)
Example:
he felt a throbbing in his head
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("pounding" is a kind of...):
beat; heartbeat; pulsation; pulse (the rhythmic contraction and expansion of the arteries with each beat of the heart)
Derivation:
pound (move rhythmically)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Repeated heavy blows
Synonyms:
buffeting; pounding
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural events
Hypernyms ("pounding" is a kind of...):
blow; bump (an impact (as from a collision))
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb pound
Context examples:
Then there followed a great to-do through all our old inn, heavy feet pounding to and fro, furniture thrown over, doors kicked in, until the very rocks re-echoed and the men came out again, one after another, on the road and declared that we were nowhere to be found.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
So they set to work in one of the big yellow rooms of the castle and worked for three days and four nights, hammering and twisting and bending and soldering and polishing and pounding at the legs and body and head of the Tin Woodman, until at last he was straightened out into his old form, and his joints worked as well as ever.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar under his mild directions.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
While many of the remains studied have been repatriated, the data let scientists assemble a detailed chronology of the region's Neolithic Demographic Transition, in which stone tools reflect an agricultural transition from cutting meat to pounding grain.
(Scientists chart a baby boom in southwestern Native Americans from 500 to 1300 A.D., NSF)
The boat was leaping and pounding as it fell over the crests, I could hear the seas rushing past, and spray was continually being thrown aboard.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Suddenly the schooner in front of me gave a violent yaw, turning, perhaps, through twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one shout followed another from on board; I could hear feet pounding on the companion ladder and I knew that the two drunkards had at last been interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Then he realized the significance of it, and his heart began pounding and challenging him to play the lover with this woman who was not a spirit from other worlds but a mere woman with lips a cherry could stain.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
But it was not till the third day that we found them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in the pounding surf of the grim south-western promontory.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
How great the risk I realized when I was once more buried beneath the pounding seas and clinging for life to the pinrail at the foot of the foremast.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
She answered with a grateful little smile that sent my heart pounding, and started to descend the companion-stairs.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
