duettingn.
/djʊˈɛtɪŋ/, /dʒʊˈɛtɪŋ/, U.S. /d(j)uˈɛdɪŋ/ 1. The action or practice of performing a duet.
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1817 Thoughts on National Calamity 36 All the waltzing, and duetting, and lounging, and sprawling, mean nothing.
1882 Eclectic Mag. Sept. 334/2 This kind of duetting was exactly the way two hundred years ago.
1963 Times 27 Dec. 4/7 The exhilarating and often quasi-instrumental vocal duetting, sometimes in scat or in falsetto, behind the melodic line.
1994 Gramophone July 94/2 The duetting of the two ladies is beautifully matched.., with carefully graded dynamics.
2011 N. Kenyon Faber Pocket Guide to Bach 186 The duetting of soprano and bass is interrupted by the questioning of the alto.
2. Zoology. A coordinated exchange of vocalizations or other types of signal between a pair (male and female) of animals. Duetting is particularly well-attested in tropical birds, primates (esp. gibbons and titis), and certain insects.
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1941 R. E. Moreau in Ibis 5 176 So far as I know and can ascertain..duetting is unknown among them [sc. Palæarctic birds]; but several instances of African species have come to notice where both birds of a pair sing in unison or a second bird..regularly joins in.
1986 Behaviour 96 24 In an unfamiliar environment, the animals [sc. siamang gibbons] are exposed to a set of new stimuli which might in themselves activate duetting.
1999 Auk 116 373/1 Duetting occurs more frequently among birds that are resident and paired year-round, as in the tropics.
2013 C. Horisk & R. B. Cocroft in Animal Communic. Theory x. 261 Duetting..is especially common in insects such as leafhoppers that communicate with substrate-borne vibrations.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2016; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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