Blooming

How to spell blooming

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blooming

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blooming mean?

1. adjectiveFlowering, thriving, or looking healthy and full of life.
2. adjectiveA mild British informal word used for emphasis or annoyance, standing in for stronger language.

Blooming in a sentence

• The roses in the front garden are blooming a little earlier than usual this year.

• The blooming printer has jammed again right before the meeting.

• After the new contract, the small bakery is blooming and hiring more staff.

• We waited an hour because of the blooming roadworks on the bypass.

Where does blooming come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word grows out of the noun and verb 'bloom', which English took from the Old Norse 'blom' or 'blomi', meaning a flower or blossom, brought over by Scandinavian settlers during the Viking age. The native Old English had a related word 'blostma', the ancestor of 'blossom', so the two share a deep Germanic root meaning 'to flower'. By the medieval period 'bloom' had settled into English both as the flower itself and as the act of flowering, and the participle 'blooming' followed naturally, describing something in full flower. From there the sense widened to mean thriving or in glowing good health, as in a 'blooming' complexion. In British English a quite separate, informal use emerged in the nineteenth century, where 'blooming' became a mild softened oath, a polite stand-in for stronger language. The spelling simply keeps the double 'o' of 'bloom' before adding '-ing', which is the main thing to remember.

How the word is built

• bloom (flower, flourish)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)