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eking
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Eking

Eke \Eke\ ([=e]k), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Eked; p. pr. & vb. n. Eking.] [AS. [=e]kan, [=y]kan; akin to OFries, [=a]ka, OS. ?kian, OHG. ouhh[=o]n to add, Icel. auka to increase, Sw. ["o]ka, Dan. ["o]ge, Goth. aukan, L. augere, Skr. ?jas strength, ugra mighty, and probably to English wax, v. i. Cf. Augment, Nickname.] To increase; to add to; to augment; -- now commonly used with out, the notion conveyed being to add to, or piece out by a laborious, inferior, or scanty addition; as, to eke out a scanty supply of one kind with some other. ``To eke my pain.''
--Spenser.

He eked out by his wits an income of barely fifty pounds.
--Macaulay.

Eking

Eking \Ek"ing\, n. [From Eke, v. t.] (Shipbuilding)

  1. A lengthening or filling piece to make good a deficiency in length.

  2. The carved work under the quarter piece at the aft part of the quarter gallery. [Written also eiking.]

Wiktionary
eking

Etymology 1 alt. 1 The act or process of adding. 2 That which is added. 3 (context nautical obsolete English) A supplementary piece of timber used to lengthen another. n. 1 The act or process of adding. 2 That which is added. 3 (context nautical obsolete English) A supplementary piece of timber used to lengthen another. Etymology 2

vb. (present participle of eke English)

Usage examples of "eking".

Their names were Lookout, eking and Dollar and they asked me to bring you a message-" Craig got no further, for Tungata's anger turned to red filry.

On the road, he had raided fruit trees and stolen a couple of chickens, eking them out with fruits and berries.

Carrik encouraged Killashandra to spend, and practice permitted her to suspend what few scruples remained from years of eking necessities out of student allotments.

True, there were occasional incidents involving lesser lights like merchants, captains, executives and enough freaks eking out a marginal living on any big station like this to account for GBA and 'accidents' as well as extortionist intimidation but nothing on the scale of this felony.

After between ten and thirty standard years, with an average of only twenty, populations of up to several billions numbered, at best, in the hundreds of thousands, eking out subsistence livings in the new environment.

Prospectors and miners, existing at the edge of human civilization, independent individualists eking out their living in the vast dark emptiness of the Belt, surviving in a world of danger and loneliness.