Aiding

How to spell aiding

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce aiding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aiding mean?

1. verbGiving help, support, or assistance to a person or process.

Aiding in a sentence

• The charity is aiding families who lost their homes in the flood.

• Good lighting works by aiding concentration during long study sessions.

Where does aiding come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'aid', which entered English in the late 1400s from the Old French 'aidier', meaning 'to help' or 'to assist'. The French word descended from the Latin 'adiutare', a frequentative form of 'adiuvare', built from 'ad-' meaning 'to' or 'towards' and 'iuvare' meaning 'to help'. The literal sense was therefore 'to keep giving help', the repeated, ongoing assistance captured neatly by the modern '-ing' form. The same Latin 'adiutare' lies behind the noun 'adjutant', a military officer who assists a commander, which preserves the harder 'dj' sound that English smoothed away in 'aid'. The spelling trap is the 'ai' vowel pair, which writers sometimes flip to 'ia' or reduce to a single letter despite the clear long-A sound.

How the word is built

• aid (root: help, from Latin adiutare)
• -ing (present participle suffix)