bellying

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of belly

adj

1. (not-comparable)Bulging or billowing.

   “Did it change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle of air from the leech of the bellying sail?”

   “And the light mounts over the faces of all the tall blind houses, slides through a chink and paints the lustrous bellying crimson curtains […]”

   “He looked at the stout bellying occupant of the other chair, his mouth open, his snores reverberant.”

   “As he swept out of the room with a bellying sweep of his gown and a toss of his silver hair, his old heart was beating madly.”

noun

1. A bulging, swelling or billowing shape; the act or state of bulging, swelling or billowing.

   “1873, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Sunset,” Diary entry dated 3 November, 1873, in The Dublin Review, July, August, September, 1920, p. 64, A few minutes later the brightness over; one great dull rope coiling overhead sidelong from the sunset, its dewlaps and bellyings painted with a maddery campion-colour that seemed to stoop and drop like sopped cake;”

   “One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness […]”

   “The room into which I was ushered, with its leering volutes and hideous bellyings of brown mahogany, intimately reminded me of a Beardsley drawing.”