Advocating

How to spell advocating

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce advocating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does advocating mean?

1. verbPublicly recommending or arguing in support of a particular cause, policy, or course of action.

Advocating in a sentence

• The union is advocating for higher wages across the sector.

• She spent years advocating stronger safety rules in factories.

Where does advocating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb advocare, which literally meant 'to call to' or 'to summon to one's aid', formed from the prefix ad- 'to' and vocare 'to call'. In Roman courts an advocatus was a person called in to support someone's case, which is exactly how the legal sense of pleading on another's behalf arose. English took the noun and verb through Old French and Latin during the late Middle Ages, and by the 1600s 'advocate' had settled into its modern meaning of arguing publicly in favour of something. The same vocare root sits inside familiar relatives like 'vocal', 'voice', and 'vocation', all carrying the idea of calling out. Knowing that voc means 'call' helps fix the spelling, since the middle is clearly v-o-c, and the ending is simply the verb -ate dropping its e before -ing.

How the word is built

• ad- (to)
• voc (call, from Latin vocare)
• -ate (verb)
• -ing (present participle)