Definition of "proceeding"

He had often painted himself at a mirror, a tortuous and fascinating proceeding, as every artist knows, and had been forced to admire the way in which he was made.

1919, Rita Wellman, The Wings of Desire

It was with feelings of no small astonishment, when the carriage drew up before the door with the red lamp, and the very legible inscription of ‘Sawyer, late Nockemorf,’ that Mr. Pickwick saw, on popping his head out of the coach window, the boy in the gray livery very busily employed in putting up the shutters—the which, being an unusual and an unbusinesslike proceeding at that hour of the morning, at once suggested to his mind two inferences: the one, that some good friend and patient of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s was dead; the other, that Mr. Bob Sawyer himself was bankrupt.

1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 50, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837

I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at such an unusual proceeding.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

The proceedings of the high commission.

1848, Lord Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second

Since impeachment is a legal proceeding, while anyone can make a motion to start the process, the Judiciary Committee determines whether there are sufficient grounds for impeachment.

December 7 2016, Kelly Phillips Erb writing in Forbes, House Says No To Renewed Efforts To Impeach IRS Commissioner