▪ I. gliding, vbl. n.
(ˈglaɪdɪŋ)
[See -ing1.]
1. a. The action of the vb. glide in various senses.
| 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. xviii. xcv. (1495) 841 The serpent..crepyth wyth preuy paces and glydynges. c 1440 Promp. Parv. 199/1 Glydynge, serpcio. 1576 Turberv. Venerie 122 Making great glydings and hitting his dew⁓clawes upon the grounde. 1600 S. Nicholson Acolastus (1876) 48 With a silent gliding, A Christall brooke ran. 1644 Digby Nat. Bodies viii. 63 It [light] will follow the nature of grosser bodies, and haue glidinges like them. 1794 Sir W. Jones Inst. Hindu Law vi. §63 The glidings of this vital spirit through ten thousand millions of uterine passages. 1817 Byron Beppo xiv, The loveliness at times we see In momentary gliding. 1842 E. Wilson Anat. Vade M. (ed. 2) 93 Gliding is the simple movement of one articular surface upon another. 1856 Grindon Life ii. (1875) 14 The gliding of the clouds before the wind. a 1859 Macaulay Hist. Eng. xxiv. (1861) V. 208 A rapid yet easy gliding before the trade winds. |
b. Cryst. = glide n. 5; also, the lateral movement of particles that occurs in glide. So gliding-plane = glide-plane.
| 1886 Mineral. Mag. Dec. 82 In every crystal, in addition to..the planes along which slipping accompanied by a rotation of certain of the molecules occurs (gliding-planes), there is a..set of ‘structure-planes’. 1938 W. A. Wooster Text-bk. Crystal Physics ii. 42 Gliding in crystals is restricted to certain crystallographically defined planes and directions. 1942 M. P. Billings Struct. Geol. ii. 26 Gliding is of two types, translation-gliding and twin-gliding. 1959 Chambers's Encycl. X. 775/1 Plastic deformation occurs as a result of the mutual gliding of these planes over one another. |
2. Aeronaut. Flight which is not dependent on engine power; the action of flying in this way. Freq. attrib., as gliding angle, gliding contest, gliding flight, gliding school; gliding-boat, a hydroplane; gliding machine = glider 2 a; gliding path = glide path.
| 1896 O. Chanute Diary 23 June in Wright Papers (1953) I. 641 It is a gliding but not a soaring mach[in]e and little is to be expected from it. 1898 Sci. Amer. Suppl. 22 Jan. 18390/2 It was a great deal more difficult to control any gliding machine on the ground than when the operator was in the air. 1902 Encycl. Brit. XXV. 103/1 Reducing gliding flight to regular practice. 1904 Trans. Inst. Naval Archit. XLVI. 245 Mr. Wilbur Wright found that if the hollowness [of the plane] was seriously increased, the centre of effort, instead of continuing to move forward as the gliding angle was diminished, actually moved backwards again. 1906 Sci. Amer. 22 Sept. 211/1 The term gliding machine (meaning soaring machine) should..be dropped from the nomenclature of aeronautics, as it is liable to be confused with the hydroplane or gliding boat, which is also a gliding machine. 1910 Daily Chron. 12 Mar. 3/3 To establish a gliding school at Hockley, in Essex. 1922 Daily Mail (Continental ed.) 19 Oct., The third day of the gliding contest at Itford Hill, near Lewes, Sussex. 1922 Westm. Gaz. 23 Oct., ‘Gliding’ is no longer an adequate name for the new form of flight which has been discovered. 1930 Proc. Inst. Radio Engin. May 833 A special radiobeam..is so oriented..as to define the proper gliding path which..will permit..landings. 1950 Gloss. Aeronaut. Terms (B.S.I.) i. 8 Gliding angle, the angle between the flight path in a glide and the horizontal. 1960 C. H. Gibbs-Smith Aeroplane 197 The historical assessment of true gliding. |
▪ II. gliding, ppl. a.
(ˈglaɪdɪŋ)
[See -ing2.]
1. That glides (in various senses of the vb.).
| c 1420 Lydg. Assembly Gods 613 On a glydyng serpent rydyng a gret pas. 1603 Florio Montaigne (1634) 576, I commend a gliding, an obscure and reposed life. 1645 Milton Colast. (1851) 378, I may bee driv'n to curle up this gliding prose into a rough Sotadic. 1649 T. Ford Lusus Fort. 107 Transitory things which are as gliding as the stream of a swift current. 1718 Rowe tr. Lucan 195 The rolling Flood the gliding Navy bore. 1764 Goldsm. Trav. 294 The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sails. 1881 C. A. Edwards Organs 112 These drawbacks have been overcome by the ‘gliding’ coupler. 1885 Syd. Soc. Lex., Gliding joint, a form of diarthrosis in which the articular surfaces of the bones are nearly flat, and have only a sliding motion between each other. 1888 Sweet Eng. Sounds §23 It is often difficult to draw the line between gliding and fixed configuration. |
b. spec. in Her. (See quot.)
| 1765–87 in Porny Heraldry Gloss. 1868 Cussans Her. (1893) 129 Gliding, or Glissant, used to describe serpents when moving forwards in Fess. |
† 2. = glib a. 1. Obs.—1
| 1594 T. B. La Primaud. Fr. Acad. ii. 401 Both the childs body, and the way also is thereby made more gliding and slippery. |