Definition of "breasting" [breast•ing]

• Present participle of breast. (verb)
• The curved channel in which a breastwheel turns. (noun)

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• "Twice, after tortuous effort, squirming and twisting, he failed in breasting the big trunk, and on the third attempt, after infinite exertion, he cleared it only to topple helplessly forward and fall on his face in the tangled undergrowth."
• "Others waddled, Dominic Cork bustled, Richard Ellison scampered, Derek Pringle pranced doing a kind of human dressage, and the more rotund were as chest-on as an old maid breasting the billows off Cromer beach in early spring."
• "The one, half-amphibian, breasting the water with muscular arms, could not hope to overtake or escape an enemy who propelled a fire-hollowed tree trunk by means of a wooden paddle; nor could the other, trusting to his own nimbleness, compete with a foe who careered wildly across the plain on the back of a half-broken stallion."