A simple typo. I wrote looing instead of looking. But my spell-checker didn’t catch it.
There’s a game called “loo” and “to loo” is to subject to a forfeit at loo. So technically there must be a present participle in the form of “looing”.
Who the heck would ever use the word, though? Virtually every hit in Google Books is a scanning error of “looking”. A handful of cookbooks mention a Looing sauce, but such a small handful that it can’t be a standard term.
Had anyone here ever looed? Done any looing? I know all you Brits have gone to the loo, where you don’t want any looky-loos. I’ll stop now.
So is this just an artifact of the spell-checker programmers just programming all participles or have I been blind to looing all these years?
On a related note, my spell-checker flags “antiderivatives” (as in Calculus), and has suggested that maybe what I mean is “ant derivatives.” Are ant derivatives really a thing?
Here’s what the dictionary installed on my laptop has to say:
1 definition found
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Loo \Loo\ (l[=oo]), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Looed} (l[=oo]d); p.
pr. & vb. n. {Looing}.]
To beat in the game of loo by winning every trick. [Written
also {lu}.] --Goldsmith.
[1913 Webster]
When I search for ‘loo’, I get this:
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Lanterloo \Lan"ter*loo`\, n.
An old name of {loo}
(a) .
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Loo \Loo\ (l[=oo]), n. [For older lanterloo, F. lanturelu,
lanturlu, name of the game; orig., the refrain of a
vaudeville.]
(a) An old game played with five, or three, cards dealt to
each player from a full pack. When five cards are used
the highest card is the knave of clubs or (if so agreed
upon) the knave of trumps; -- formerly called
{lanterloo}.
(b) A modification of the game of "all fours" in which the
players replenish their hands after each round by drawing
each a card from the pack.
[1913 Webster]
{Loo table}, a round table adapted for a circle of persons
playing loo.
[1913 Webster]
Oh, and why was Eisenhower a great mathematician?
He proved that American schools are everywhere integrable.
I have no respect for spellcheck after mine rejected “discoordination” and suggested I replace it with disco ordination. As amusing a picture as that presents, it is not the same thing.