Blessing

How to spell blessing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blessing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blessing mean?

1. nounSomething that brings welcome benefit, advantage, or good fortune.
2. nounA person's approval or permission for something to go ahead.
3. nounA short prayer asking for divine favour, often said before a meal.

Blessing in a sentence

• The unexpected refund was a real blessing during a tight month.

• The project moved forward once the board gave its blessing.

• The family paused to say a blessing before the holiday dinner.

• Having reliable childcare nearby is a genuine blessing for working parents.

• They married with the full blessing of both families.

• The priest offered a blessing over the newly opened hospital wing.

Where does blessing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word traces back to the Old English verb bletsian, earlier bloedsian, which meant to consecrate or make holy. Strikingly, that verb was built on blod, the Old English word for blood, because early Anglo-Saxon religious rites involved marking or sprinkling something with sacrificial blood to set it apart as sacred. After the arrival of Christianity, the word was repurposed to translate the Latin benedicere (to speak well of, to bless) and the sense softened from a bloody rite to the gentler idea of invoking divine favour. Over the centuries the meaning broadened still further, so that today a blessing can simply be any welcome benefit or piece of good fortune, with no religious flavour at all. The double s in the spelling comes straight from the base verb bless, and the only real trap is remembering that the ending is the ordinary -ing, not -eing.

How the word is built

• bless (from Old English bletsian: to consecrate)
• -ing (noun suffix)