Absorbing

How to spell absorbing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce absorbing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does absorbing mean?

1. adjectiveSo interesting that it holds your full attention.
2. verbPresent participle of absorb: taking in or soaking up a substance, energy, or information.

Absorbing in a sentence

• adjective

  The documentary was so absorbing that nobody noticed the time.

• verb

  The sponge is absorbing the spilled milk from the counter.

• adjective

  She found the novel utterly absorbing and read it in one sitting.

• verb

  The dark walls were absorbing most of the heat from the afternoon sun.

Where does absorbing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb absorbere, which meant 'to swallow up' or 'to gulp down'. It was built from the prefix ab-, meaning 'from' or 'away', joined to sorbere, meaning 'to suck in' or 'to swallow'. English took the verb 'absorb' from French and Latin in the 1400s, originally in the literal sense of soaking up a liquid, and the figurative meaning of soaking up a person's full attention grew naturally from there. The form 'absorbing', the present participle, came to work as an adjective for anything that holds the mind so completely that nothing else is noticed. A useful spelling cue is that the middle is sorb, spelled with an s, even though the voice turns it into a z sound, and the same sorb root surfaces in 'sorbet', a chilly cousin originally meaning a drink that is sipped.

How the word is built

• ab- (from, away)
• sorb (suck in, from Latin sorbere)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)