Asserting

How to spell asserting

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce asserting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does asserting mean?

1. verbStating something firmly as true, or insisting upon a claim or right.

Asserting in a sentence

• The report opens by asserting that profits rose last year.

• She spent the meeting asserting her right to a fair hearing.

Where does asserting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'assert', which comes from the Latin asserere, meaning to lay claim to or to declare. That verb was formed from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward', joined to serere, which literally meant 'to join, link, or bind together', the same root that gives us 'series' and 'insert'. In Roman law asserere had a strikingly concrete sense: it described laying a hand on a slave to declare that person either free or owned, so the word carried the idea of formally claiming something as one's own. English took it up in the early 1600s with the broader meaning of stating something firmly or standing up for a claim. The spelling trap is the double s in the middle, an echo of the as- prefix meeting the sert root, plus the single t before the -ing ending.

How the word is built

• as- (from ad-: to, toward)
• sert (from Latin serere: to join, link)
• -ing (present participle suffix)