Assuring

How to spell assuring

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce assuring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does assuring mean?

1. verbTelling someone with confidence that something is true or certain, so as to remove their doubt.
2. adjectiveHaving the effect of giving someone confidence or removing their worry.

Assuring in a sentence

• verb

  The agent kept assuring the buyers that the contract was watertight.

• adjective

  The doctor spoke in a calm, assuring tone that settled the patient's nerves.

• verb

  He spent the meeting assuring staff that no jobs would be lost.

• adjective

  There was something deeply assuring about the manager's steady plan for the year.

Where does assuring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb assecurare, which combined the prefix ad- (meaning 'to' or 'toward', here softened to as-) with securus, meaning 'safe' or 'free from worry'. Latin securus itself joined se- ('without') and cura ('care'), so the literal idea was 'to make someone free from care'. The verb passed into Old French as aseurer and then entered English in the 1300s, where 'assure' came to mean making a person confident or certain about something. The double s in the modern spelling reflects the assimilation of that ad- prefix against the following s, the same pattern seen in 'assemble' and 'assign'. The present participle 'assuring' simply adds -ing, and the trap for writers is remembering both s letters while keeping the silent root spelling of 'sure' intact.

How the word is built

• as- (variant of ad-, meaning 'to')
• sure (from Latin securus 'safe, free from care')
• -ing (present participle suffix)