Bulbing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of creating enlarged and rounded portions on a body
2. The process of forming swollen or rounded structures on a surface
3. The action of generating protruding, rounded shapes on an object

Etymology: "Bulbing" is the present participle of "bulb", so its story is really the story of the noun. The Ancient Greek "bolbós" named a plant with a round swelling on its underground stem, and the Latin "bulbus" took over that sense, meaning both bulb and onion. Middle English borrowed the word from Latin as "bulb" or "bolbe", and the plant meaning stayed central to it for centuries. The verb grew from that botanical noun. Once "bulb" meant a rounded, swollen underground growth, English speakers could describe something swelling into a similar shape, which is the sense captured in the meaning here: forming swollen or rounded structures on a surface. The participle keeps the image of a plant pushing out a bulge, carried over from the garden to any surface that bulges.

Synonyms: bulging, swelling, protruding, bloating, inflating

Antonyms: deflating, flattening, shrinking, compressing