rigging

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɪɡɪŋ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪɡɪŋ

From Middle English riggyng, ryggyng, riggynge, equivalent to rig +‎ -ing.

rigging (countable and uncountable, plural riggings)

1. Dress; tackle; especially (nautical), the ropes, chains, etc., that support the masts and spars of a sailing vessel, and serve as purchases for adjusting the sails, etc.
   • 1941 March 12, Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1970, page 461:

     The moon was full and shone down on us through the masts and rigging of an old fishing wreck, which had been grounded just off the beach where we were sitting.

   • 1987, Gene Wolfe, chapter XXVII, in The Urth of the New Sun, 1st US edition, New York: Tor Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 162:

     For a time the apostis glowed like a forge; gradually it dimmed and went out, and our ship resumed a more conventional position, though the wind still screamed in the rigging and the clouds scudded under us like flecks of foam in a mill race.

2. Similar supporting material used for construction work, or in film, theater, etc.
   • 1966, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 6, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York: Bantam Books, published 1976, →ISBN, page 135:

     […] or even, daring, spent the night up some pole in a lineman's tent like caterpillars, swung among a web of telephone wires, living in the very copper rigging and secular miracle of communication, untroubled by the dumb voltages flickering their miles, the night long, in the thousands of unheard messages.

• (tackle of a sailing vessel): running rigging, standing rigging

• (tackle of a sailing vessel): See Thesaurus:rigging

• bid rigging
• election-rigging
• rigging monkey

From rig +‎ -ing.

rigging

1. present participle and gerund of rig