Believing

How to spell believing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce believing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does believing mean?

1. verbAccepting that something is true or real, or having confidence in someone or something.

Believing in a sentence

• She kept believing that the missing parcel would eventually turn up.

• Believing the rumour without checking the facts caused needless panic in the office.

Where does believing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of 'believe', which descends from the Old English word 'geliefan', meaning to trust, to have faith in, or to hold something dear. That verb belongs to a wider Germanic family, sharing roots with the modern German 'glauben', and it grew out of an ancient base connected to 'love' and to holding something as precious. Over time the spelling lost its old prefix and settled into the modern shape, with the tricky vowel pair following the familiar 'i before e' pattern. The '-ing' ending was simply added to form the continuous and gerund forms, and the silent doubling rule does not apply here because the verb ends in a silent 'e', which is dropped before '-ing'. The main spelling trap is twofold: keeping the 'ie' in the correct order and remembering to drop the final 'e' of 'believe' before adding the suffix.

How the word is built

• be- (intensive prefix)
• lieve (Old English root meaning to hold dear, trust)
• -ing (present participle suffix)