There's a commonplace form in AmE, "as per your asking"... (Note this question by a rightly confused non-native speaker.)
It occurred to me that "asking" makes a beautiful noun.
(Particularly if you pulp YA for a living ... consider say crap like "The Giver" .. that would be a perfect sequel title ... "The Asking". Sounds great, right? I mean, it cries italics. You don't even have to add italics: you just look at it, and your deepest linguistic processes lean it to the right. It's sort of a linguistic optical typographical illusion.)
{Come to think of it, it's essentially the perfect title for any YA series book. Vampire Academy: The Asking. Surviving the fog: The Asking. Etc.}
So ... it's time for the asking. (Political context.) Tonight comes the asking. (Marriage upcoming.) We're going to have the asking later. (Child raising.)
My question, it has a ye-olde feel. In fact, was "asking" used, perhaps .. in the 1800s? Or earlier? Or has it never been used before? Is it a recent coinage like other Americanisms, or?
Doh: FYI I forgot about the common form "...for the asking", which seems related to, but not the same as, the above.