figuring

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈfɪɡ.ə.ɹɪŋ/
• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈfɪɡ.jɚ.ɪŋ/, /ˈfɪɡ.ɚ.ɪŋ/

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

Noun

figuring (countable and uncountable, plural figurings)

1. Calculation.
   • 2008, Patricia Murphy, Kathy Hall, Learning and Practice: Agency and Identities, →ISBN, page 157:

     Alternative figurings may be available for interpreting the everyday, and alternative ways of figuring systems of privilege may be developed in contestations over social arrangements.

   • 2011, Tim Sandlin, Western Swing: A Novel, →ISBN, page 270:

     By my figuring, he couldn't have been much over forty, but sagging, bleached-out skin and a gray to balding head made him look sixty.

2. Structure, design, or arrangement; figure.
   • 1863, Herrman S. Saroni, Musical Grammar:

     We must remember, however, that all these figurings are written with reference to the tonic signature.

   • 1894, The Clothier and Furnisher - Volume 23, page 60:

     These webbings are made in innumerable fine patternings, with silk mixtures in the design, in narrow stripings and small figurings.

3. Representation.
   • 2011, Vincent J. Hausmann, Cinema, Technologies of Visibility, and the Reanimation of Desire, →ISBN, page 35:

     Yet when we examine how Mendes's film figures the behind, as it were, behind the father, when we look closely at the film's figurings of anality in the father/son relation, we do not see an insistence that traces of a radical Otherness emerge in figurings of archaic relations and in turn challenge problematic, idealized claims that relations between men can transcend Symbolic mediation.

Related terms

• figuring out

Verb

figuring

1. present participle and gerund of figure