netting

English edit

From net +‎ -ing.

netting (countable and uncountable, plural nettings)

Something that acts as, or looks like, a net.
- 1673 May (first performance), John Dryden, Amboyna. A Tragedy. […], London: […] T[homas] N[ewcomb] for Henry Herringman, […], published 1673, →OCLC, Act III, page 31:
  Who ever ſaw a noble ſight, / That never view'd a brave Sea Fight: / Hang up your bloody Colours in the Aire, / Up with your Fights, and your Nettings prepare, / Your Merry Mates chear, with a luſty bold ſpright, / Now each Man his brindice, and then to the Fight, […]
- January 1965, U.S. Army Air Defense Digest (U.S. Army Air Defense School, Fort Bliss, Texas), page 44 (part of chapter 3, Army Air Defense Control Systems) (PDF: cover, contents, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3):
  The term "radar netting" (fig 43) describes the process by which track data derived from several additional or remote radars are gathered at a single center to produce an integrated set of meaningful target information which can be distributed to all AD elements concerned. [...] Radar netting can provide concurrent coverage of a selected area by more than one radar.

From Middle English netting (“urine”). Further etymology unclear. Perhaps borrowed from Middle Low German nattinge (“wetness”), or derived from Middle Low German nette (“wetness, urine”), netten (“to wet, urinate”). Alternatively, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English *nettan (“to wet”), from Proto-West Germanic *nattjan (“to wet”), related to Middle Low German netten (“to wet, urinate”), Dutch netten (“to wet”), German nässen (“to wet”).

netting (uncountable)

(UK, dialect, obsolete) Urine.
- 1557, Court Leet Records:
  Any undecente or noysome thinge as […] Nettinge or Fylthe.

From net +‎ -ing.

netting