Bodybuilding

How to spell bodybuilding

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce bodybuilding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bodybuilding mean?

1. nounThe activity or sport of developing the muscles through intensive weight training and diet, often for competition or appearance.

Bodybuilding in a sentence

• He took up bodybuilding after years of casual gym visits.

• The magazine ran a feature on the diet behind competitive bodybuilding.

Where does bodybuilding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern English compound, joining 'body' to the verbal noun 'building'. The first part, 'body', descends from the Old English bodig, which named the trunk or physical frame of a person and has no certain relatives outside English. The second part comes from the Old English byldan, meaning 'to construct a dwelling', itself rooted in bold, an Old English word for a house or building. By the late nineteenth century English speakers were applying the metaphor of construction to the human frame, picturing muscle developed deliberately like a structure raised brick by brick. The term took off as a named sport and pastime in the early twentieth century, when strongman culture and physique competitions made the deliberate shaping of the body into a recognised discipline. The spelling is entirely transparent once you see the two everyday words inside it, so the only real trap is whether to write it as one word, which is the settled modern form.

How the word is built

• body (Old English bodig: trunk, frame)
• build (Old English byldan: to construct)
• -ing (noun suffix naming the activity)