Braking

How to spell braking

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce braking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does braking mean?

1. verbApplying the brakes to slow down or stop a moving vehicle.

Braking in a sentence

• Hard braking on the icy road sent the car into a skid.

• Smooth braking keeps the passengers comfortable on the bus.

Where does braking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the noun 'brake', the mechanism that slows or stops a wheel, with the ordinary English ending '-ing'. The history of 'brake' itself is tangled: in earlier English a 'brake' could mean a device for crushing flax or hemp, and the sense of a contrivance that checks or arrests motion grew out of that idea of holding something firmly in check. Several Germanic and Dutch words for crushing or breaking instruments fed into the form, which is why its origin is often described as Germanic by way of Middle Dutch. By the early nineteenth century, as wheeled coaches and then railways needed reliable ways to slow down, 'brake' settled into its modern mechanical meaning. The crucial spelling trap is that 'braking' (slowing a vehicle) sounds identical to 'breaking' (snapping or shattering), yet the two come from entirely different roots, so the 'a' in braking ties it directly back to the brake pedal.

How the word is built

• brake (the mechanical device that slows a vehicle)
• -ing (forming a verbal noun or present participle)

Words that sound like braking

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• breaking: Separating something into pieces or causing it to come apart, often suddenly or by force.