Averaging

How to spell averaging

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce averaging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does averaging mean?

1. verbCalculating or amounting to a mean value, or producing a typical figure over a set of numbers.

Averaging in a sentence

• The spreadsheet kept averaging the monthly sales to spot the trend.

• By averaging the test scores, the teacher set a fair overall grade.

Where does averaging come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

This word descends from 'average', which began life in the world of medieval Mediterranean trade. The ultimate source is the Arabic 'awariya, meaning 'damaged goods', which passed into Italian as 'avaria' and then into Old French and English to describe the financial loss when a ship's cargo was damaged at sea. By custom, that loss was shared proportionally among the merchants and owners, and from this idea of splitting a cost evenly came the modern mathematical sense of a 'mean' or balanced central value. The suffix '-age' was attached on the French model, which is why the word looks French even though its heart is Arabic. The verb 'to average' grew from the noun in the eighteenth century, and 'averaging' is simply its present participle and gerund, formed by dropping the silent final 'e' before adding '-ing', the very step that trips writers up.

How the word is built

• aver- (from average: a mean value)
• -age (originally a noun ending)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix)