Shelving
adj, noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Shelves collectively. countable, uncountable
"a shelving unit"
- 2 The side-rails of a cart or waggon. countable, in-plural, uncountable
"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 […]"
- 3 A sloping surface. archaic, countable, uncountable
"[…] 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;"
- 1 present participle and gerund of shelve form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 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."
Example
More examples"Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, / And built so shelving that one cannot climb it / Without apparent hazard of his life."
Etymology
By surface analysis, shelve + -ing.
More for "shelving"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.