Accelerating

How to spell accelerating

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce accelerating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accelerating mean?

1. verbIncreasing in speed, or causing something to happen more quickly.
2. adjectiveBecoming faster or more intense over time.

Accelerating in a sentence

• verb

  She felt the train accelerating as it pulled away from the platform.

• adjective

  The accelerating pace of change left many staff struggling to keep up.

• verb

  Prices have been accelerating faster than wages all year.

• adjective

  Analysts pointed to the accelerating demand for electric vehicles.

Where does accelerating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb accelerare, meaning 'to hasten' or 'to quicken'. That verb was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward', joined to celer, an adjective meaning 'swift' or 'quick'; when ad- met the c, it assimilated and doubled to give the acc- spelling that still trips writers today. English adopted accelerate in the late 1500s, initially in the sense of making something happen sooner, and the present participle accelerating followed naturally. The same celer root survives in the word 'celerity', a more formal term for speed. Remembering that the doubled c comes from ad- pressing against celer is the key to getting the spelling right.

How the word is built

• ac- (variant of ad-: to, toward)
• celer (swift, quick)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ing (present participle)