shelving

Etymology

adj

1. Sloping (as opposed to horizontally flat or vertically upright).
   Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, / And built so shelving that one cannot climb it / Without apparent hazard of his life. c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III, Scene 1
   We still continued winding round Skiddaw, the sides of which are every where rather shelving, than steep. 1789, William Gilpin, Observations relative chiefly to picturesque beauty, made in the year 1776, London: R. Blamire, Volume 2, Section 36, p. 157
   1858, George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Volume 2, “Janet’s Repentance,” Chapter 3, p. 87, her cheeks, which, on Whitsunday, loomed through a Turnerian haze of net-work, were, on Trinity Sunday, seen reposing in distinct red outline on her shelving bust, like the sun on a fog-bank
   The town of Abda is built upon the top and down the steeply shelving face of an isolated rocky spur, 1914, T. E. Lawrence, chapter 5, in The Wilderness of Zin,, London: Jonathan Cape, published 1936, page 109
   […] a gently shelving plain led to a huge forest through which there were tracks that could safely be followed. 1987, Edward Rutherfurd, Sarum, London: Century, page 6

verb

1. present participle and gerund of shelve

noun

1. Shelves collectively.
   a shelving unit
   There is ample shelving in the basement.
2. (chiefly in the plural) The side-rails of a cart or waggon.
   So, creaking and creaking, and the shelvins skirling under the weight of their load, they passed that danger point, the carts plodded into motion again […] 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 47
3. (now rare) A sloping surface.
   […] the way was all along set so full of Snares, Traps, Gins, and Nets here, and so full of Pits, Pitfalls, deep holes and shelvings down there, that had it now been dark […] had he had a thousand souls, they had in reason been cast away; 1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, London: Nath. Ponder, page 82
   [The little room] had more corners in it than the brain of an obstinate man; was full of mad closets, into which nothing could be put that was not specially invented and made for that purpose; had mysterious shelvings and bulk-heads […] 1844, Charles Dickens, chapter 35, in Martin Chuzzlewit, page 412
   dry light sand, blown from higher shelvings, striped the dark wet edges of the shore 1919, Henry Blake Fuller, chapter 29, in Bertram Cope’s Year, Chicago: R.F. Seymour, page 276
   Frau Von Zeck settled her powerful chins upon the coarse shelving of her Wagnerian breasts […] 1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, New York: The Modern Library, Part 2, Chapter 24, p. 345