telescoping

English

Verb

telescoping

1. present participle and gerund of telescope

Adjective

telescoping (not comparable)

1. Synonym of telescopable

Noun

telescoping (countable and uncountable, plural telescopings)

1. The act of extending or contracting in the manner of a telescope.
   • 1940 November, H. A. Robinson, “Devices to Reduce Collision Results”, in Railway Magazine, page 580:

     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 the other.

   • 2000, Walter Sickert, Anna Gruetzner Robins, Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art, page 507:

     Mr Sadleir's prose style recalls Whistler's at every turn. There are the same terrific and nonchalant telescopings of continents and centuries, and the same honeyed omniscience, kind but firm, and the same want of an innate sense of proportion […]

2. Extending limited data to make up for gaps
   • 1979, Joseph Miller, Kings, Lists, and History in Kasanje - History in Africa, page 67:

     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 […]

3. A telescopic action.

   intermediate stages of telescoping of the parts together