- a heavy, fall of rain or snow, a downpour. Ding is a verb meaning to beat or strike with heavy blows. So a real onding of rain has some force behind it. Onding can be used figuratively to mean an assault, attack, onset, outburst of noise, talk, etc. as in The on-ding of their ill tongues (Samuel Crockett The Raiders 1893) and The anger o’ a king is like the on-ding o’ daith itsel (T. W. Paterson The Wyse-Sayin’s o’ Solomon 1916).
More cheerily: At streek o’ day [daybreak], ae canty [pleasant] Spring, Tam wauken’d [wakened] to the birds’ onding (John Horne A Lan’wart Loon 1928).