Alleging

How to spell alleging

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce alleging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does alleging mean?

1. verbClaiming or asserting that something is true, typically a wrongdoing, without yet having proof.

Alleging in a sentence

• The report stops short of alleging any deliberate fraud.

• She filed a complaint alleging that her landlord ignored the repairs.

Where does alleging come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'allege', which entered English in the 1300s through Anglo-Norman French forms such as 'aleger', meaning to advance a claim or plea. The ultimate source is the Latin 'allegare', built from 'ad-' (meaning 'to' or 'toward') and 'legare' (meaning 'to depute, to send with a commission, or to cite'); so the literal idea was of formally putting something forward for consideration. In legal use the meaning narrowed to stating something as fact before it has been proved, which is why we still 'allege' in courtrooms and headlines today. The same 'legare' root sits behind 'delegate' and 'legate', a useful memory hook for the single 'g'. A spelling trap here is that 'allege' takes a double 'l' but only one 'g', and adding '-ing' drops the silent final 'e', giving 'alleging' rather than the tempting but wrong 'alledging'.

How the word is built

• al- (from ad-: to, toward)
• leg (from legare: to depute, send, cite)
• -ing (present participle)