Booking

How to spell booking

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce booking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does booking mean?

1. nounAn arrangement to secure a seat, room, table, or ticket in advance.
2. nounIn football, a formal caution recorded by the referee, shown with a yellow card.

Booking in a sentence

• The hotel confirmed our booking by email within minutes.

• The defender picked up an early booking for a reckless tackle.

• She cancelled the restaurant booking when the meeting ran late.

• A second booking in the match meant he was sent off.

Where does booking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the everyday verb 'book', which in turn comes from the Old English 'boc', the word for a written document or volume. That noun is thought to trace back to the same Germanic root as 'beech', because early runic records were sometimes carved on beech wood, and that wooden connection is a memorable reason the spelling keeps its plain Germanic look. From the noun came a verb meaning 'to write down in a book', so to 'book' something was literally to enter it in a register or ledger. The '-ing' ending then turned that verb into a noun for the act or result of recording, which by the nineteenth century settled into its modern senses of reserving a seat, room, or ticket, and of a police officer formally entering a charge. The doubled letters that trip people up come simply from the short vowel in 'book' meeting the '-ing' suffix.

How the word is built

• book (from Old English boc: written record)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)