riddling

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of riddle (“to speak ambiguously or answer a question”)

   Track work had to be confined largely to the vital aspects of alignment and level, and the finer points of track maintenance, as well as such matters as the riddling and cleaning of ballast, proper care of drainage and formation, cuttings, and embankments, suffered considerable neglect.

   1953 September, “Restoring British Permanent Way to Prewar Standards”, in Railway Magazine, page 584

plural riddlings

1. The posing or solving of a riddle.

   Hence the laughter of ridicule, whether spontaneous or incited by words, and hence too the laughter of wit, which has an intermediate ancestry in such mental tussles or riddlings as may at one time have taken the place of more savage physical strife.

   2015, W. K. Wimsatt, Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism, page 94

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of riddle (“to sieve or fill with holes”)

plural riddlings

1. Material removed by riddling, or sieving.

   The good grain is riddled by hand into a heap at a convenient part of the barn, and the riddlings are thrown among the stuff which descends to the floor through the other spout.

   1832, The Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, volume 3, page 989

comparative more riddling · superlative most riddling

1. Enfilled with or spread throughout; permeating; pervading.

   O perplex'd diſcompoſition, O ridling diſtemper, O miſerable condition of Man.

   1624, John Donne, “1. Meditation”, in Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: […] A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC, page 8

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of riddle (“to plait”)