Assessing

How to spell assessing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce assessing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does assessing mean?

1. verbEvaluating or judging the value, quality, or significance of something.

Assessing in a sentence

• The surveyor spent the morning assessing the damage to the roof.

• The bank is still assessing whether the couple can afford the mortgage.

Where does assessing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb assidere, formed from ad, meaning 'to' or 'beside', and sedere, meaning 'to sit'. The image was of a judge or official literally sitting beside someone, especially to sit in judgement and set the amount of a tax or fine; the past participle stem assess- carried that legal sense. English took the word in the late 1300s through Anglo-French assesser, where it meant to fix the value of property for taxation. From that money-minded beginning it broadened to mean evaluating or appraising anything at all, from damage to a person's character. The same sedere root sits quietly inside relatives such as 'session', 'sediment' and 'reside', and the doubled s in the middle, which trips up many writers, comes from that ad- prefix assimilating into the s of sess.

How the word is built

• as- (form of ad-: to, towards)
• sess (from Latin sessus/sedere: to sit)
• -ing (present participle suffix)