following

Etymology

adj

1. Coming next, either in sequence or in time.
   See the following section.
   Towards the following morning, the thermometer fell to 5°; and at daylight, there was not an atom of water to be seen in any direction. 1835, Sir John Ross, Sir James Clark Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage …, Volume 1, pages 284–5
2. About to be specified.
   The following words have no definition[…]
3. (of a wind) Blowing in the direction of travel.
   The following wind sped us on our way.

prep

1. After, subsequent to.
   Following the meeting, we all had a chat.

noun

1. A group of followers, attendants or admirers; an entourage.
   He had a loyal following.
   And White Hart Lane was stunned when Rovers scored just five minutes after the restart in front of their away following. September 29, 2011, Jon Smith, “Tottenham 3 - 1 Shamrock Rovers”, in BBC Sport
   Mikayla has 14.4 million followers on TikTok and it is growing every day, and she has accumulated over one billion likes on the app. She also has 2.5 million followers on Instagram. Both her followings accumulate to an impressive 16.9, almost 17 million followers. 31 January 2023, Katelyn Mensah, “Who is Mikayla Nogueira? The beauty TikToker whose face and eyelashes are all over your FYP”, in The Tab, archived from the original on 2023-01-31
   Move Forward, which has built a strong following among young people, appeared to have outperformed expectations. 2023-05-14, Rebecca Ratcliffe, Thitipol Panyalimpanun, “Opposition parties take lead in Thai election”, in The Guardian
2. Vocation; business; profession.
3. (with definite article, treated as singular or plural) A thing or things to be mentioned immediately after.
   The following is a recommendation letter from the president.
   The following are the three most important questions.
4. (social media) An account which is followed.
   Coordinate term: follower
   When a new user joins Weibo, he should register Weibo and get a unique ID, and then he takes some existing users as his followings and waits for others to follow him. 2014, Zhengbiao Guo, Zhitang Li, Hao Tu, Da Xie, “Weibo: An Information-Driven Online Social Network”, in Marina L.Gavrilova, C.J. Kenneth Tan, editors, Transactions on Computational Science XXII (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 8360), Springer, part I (Neural and Social Networks), page 6
   A follower can follow any other users and receive any kind of tweets from his or her followings. 2017, Konglin Zhu, Xiaoming Fu, Wenzhong Li, Sanglu Lu, Jan Nagler, “Population Growth in Online Social Networks”, in Xiaoming Fu, Jar-Der Luo, Margarete Boos, editors, Social Network Analysis: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Case Studies, CRC Press, section 3 (The Data), subsection 1 (Three Online Social Networks)
   She scrolled through her [Chloe’s] page and liked a few of her pictures that were like candy to her eyes before thoroughly checking her followings. She then checked Chloe’s followers, which was well over a thousand followers. 2020, Jay Janzee, Don’t Get Too Close, Pittsburgh, Pa.: RoseDog Books, page 79

verb

1. present participle and gerund of follow