Definition of "waiting"

waiting¹

/ˈweɪtɪŋ/

verb
1. present participle of wait
  Quotations
  At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

waiting²

/ˈweɪtɪŋ/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural waitings
1. (obsolete) Watching, observation; keeping watch, guarding.
2. The act of staying or remaining in expectation.
  Quotations
  In all ages, men have fought over words, without waiting to know what the words really signified.
  1874, John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, I. 122
  There was an awful waiting in the earth, / As if a mystery greatened to its birth.
  1876, Richard Watson Gilder, The New Day, A Poem in Songs and Sonnets
3. Attendance, service.
  Quotations
  But it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table.
  1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XXXVI, in Middlemarch […], volume II, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, book IV, page 227