Boating

How to spell boating

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce boating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does boating mean?

1. nounThe activity of travelling in or sailing a boat, usually for pleasure or sport.

Boating in a sentence

• The family spent the holiday boating on the lake.

• Boating is popular on the canal during the summer months.

Where does boating come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built directly on the noun 'boat', which descends from the Old English bat, a word for a small open vessel that goes back to the same Germanic source as the verb meaning 'to cleave or split', perhaps recalling how early craft were made from hollowed or split logs. The same root surfaces in the Old Norse beit and was reinforced in English by Norse contact during the Viking age. The -ing ending is the familiar English suffix that turns a verb into a noun naming the activity, so 'boating' literally means the act of going about in a boat. The activity sense became common in English from the early 1800s, as river outings and pleasure rowing grew popular. The spelling is regular: keep the silent final 'e' of 'boat' out of the picture by remembering the base word ends in 't', so you simply add -ing without any doubling or dropping.

How the word is built

• boat (small vessel)
• -ing (forms an activity noun from a verb)