Asking

How to spell asking

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce asking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does asking mean?

1. verbPutting a question to someone or making a request for something.
2. nounThe amount of money a seller is requesting, especially in the phrase 'asking price'.

Asking in a sentence

• verb

  She kept asking the waiter for more water.

• noun

  The asking price for the house seemed far too high.

• verb

  Asking for a pay rise made him nervous.

• noun

  Buyers offered well below the asking price.

Where does asking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'ask', which descends from the Old English ascian, meaning 'to seek information, to call for an answer, or to demand'. That verb has deep Germanic roots, with cousins in Old Frisian and Old Saxon, and it goes back to a shared ancestor meaning 'to seek or request'. For centuries English speakers wavered between forms such as 'ascian' and the metathesised 'acsian', which is why a dialectal 'aks' pronunciation still survives, although the spelling settled firmly on 'ask'. The -ing ending is the ordinary native suffix that turns a verb into its ongoing or gerund form, so 'asking' simply describes the act of requesting in progress. Because the base verb is so short and regular, the spelling is among the most stable in English.

How the word is built

• ask (Old English ascian: to seek, request)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)