Agreeing

How to spell agreeing

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce agreeing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does agreeing mean?

1. verbSharing the same opinion as someone, or consenting to a proposal or arrangement.

Agreeing in a sentence

• The two managers were agreeing on every point of the budget.

• By agreeing to the new terms, she committed to a longer contract.

Where does agreeing come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'agree', which English took from the Old French agreer, meaning 'to please' or 'to receive kindly'. That verb was built from the phrase a gré, where the preposition a meant 'to' and gré meant 'goodwill', 'pleasure', or 'liking', a noun that descends from the Latin gratum, meaning 'something pleasing or thankful' (the same root that gives us 'grateful' and 'gratitude'). When the word arrived in English in the 1300s, the idea was that two people brought into a pleasing accord, and from that came the modern sense of sharing the same opinion or consenting to something. The spelling keeps the doubled 'e' from the French stem gree, and adding the '-ing' simply stacks the suffix straight onto it, which is why three vowels (ee plus i) line up in a row and trip people up. Because the stress sits on the second syllable, the final 'e' of the root is retained rather than dropped, unlike many verbs where '-ing' swallows a silent 'e'.

How the word is built

• a- (to)
• gree (from Old French gré: goodwill, pleasure)
• -ing (present participle suffix)