tithing

plural tithings

1. A tithe or tenth in its various senses, (particularly):
   1. The tithe given as an offering to the church.

      I prayed for the sick and saw some of them healed under my hands. I was given tithings of money and food by people who had not enough to eat themselves.

      1998, Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents, HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP (2019), page 294

   2. The payment of tithes.
   3. The collection of tithes.
2. dialectalTen sheaves of wheat (originally set up as such for the tithe proctor).

   I see the boys of summer in their ruin / Lay the gold tithings barren, / Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils

   1934, Dylan Thomas, “I see the boys of summer”, in 18 Poems, London: The Fortune Press

3. historicallawA body of households (originally a tenth of a hundred or ten households) bound by frankpledge to collective responsibility and punishment for each other's behavior.

   Synonyms: tenmantale

4. historicallawA part of the hundred as a rural division of territory.

   Synonyms: decenary, decime, frankpledge, fribourg

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of tithe