[-ING1.] The action of the verb STEAM, in various senses.
1. † a. The exhaling of odor. † b. The glowing of flame. c. Emission of vapor, fuming (in quots. fig.).
a. 1100. Aldhelm Glosses, 3490 (Napier). Fraglantiam .i. odorem, steminge.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 474/1. Stemynge, or leemynge of fyyr, flammacio.
1675. J. Owen, Indwelling Sin, vii. (1732), 77. It [sin] darkens the Mind … through the steaming of the Affections, heated with the noisom Lusts that have laid hold on them.
1819. R. L. Sheil, Evadne, IV. ii. 64. You wonder That tears are dropping from my flaming eyelids, But ’tis the steaming of a burning heart.
2. The process of subjecting to the action of steam.
1812. Sir J. Sinclair, Syst. Husb. Scot., I. 117. The practice of steaming [potatoes] was not known in those days.
1862. C. O’Neill, Dict. Calico Printing, s.v. Steam colours, The damper the steam the sooner will the steaming be done.
1868. Rep. U.S. Commissioner Agric. (1869), 427. Steaming is done only twice a week, the food keeping warm three or four days in the box.
attrib. 1745. De Coctlogon’s Hist. Arts & Sci., II. 106/2. A Steaming-Bason [used in hat-making].
1832. Min. Evid. Comm. Factories Bill, 29. They all had 4s. that worked at Mr. Noble’s steaming-mill.
3. The production of steam in a boiler. Also attrib.
1874. Raymond, 6th Rep. Mines, 39. The Mount Diablo coal is used to a very great extent for steaming.
1875. Bedford, Sailor’s Pocket Bk., v. (ed. 2), 146. Whether wood can be procured in quantity sufficient for steaming purposes.
4. Travelling by steamboat or steamship.
1853. Hawthorne, Eng. Note-Bks. (1883), I. 416. I went over to the Royal Rock Hotel, about fifteen or twenty minutes’ steaming from this side of the river.
1883. F. M. Crawford, Dr. Claudius, viii. Miss Skeat also thought sailing much more poetic than steaming.
1913. J. H. Morrison, On Trail of Pioneers, xxi. 98. Eight hundred miles of swift steaming down the Coromandel Coast, brings us to Madras. Ibid., xxxiv. 166. After a fortnight of hard work the Ilala was gallantly steaming up the Zambesi.
attrib. 1889. Pall Mall Gaz., 9 May, 5/1. The City of Paris … arrived at New York yesterday, her steaming time from Queenstown to Sandy Hook being 5 days 23 hours 7 minutes.
