Branding

How to spell branding

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce branding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does branding mean?

1. nounThe practice of creating a distinctive name, image, and identity for a product, company, or person.
2. nounThe act of burning a permanent identifying mark onto the hide of livestock.

Branding in a sentence

• The agency was hired to refresh the company's branding before the launch.

• The ranch hands gathered the calves for the spring branding.

• Consistent branding across the website and packaging helped customers recognise the firm.

• Modern regulations have changed how the branding of cattle is carried out.

Where does branding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English noun 'brand', which meant a piece of burning wood, a torch, or a fire, and which has close cousins across the Germanic languages such as the German 'Brand', also meaning a fire. Because a burning iron was used to sear a permanent mark into the hides of cattle and the skin of criminals, 'brand' came to mean that scorched mark itself. From there the sense widened: a craftsman's stamped mark of ownership or quality on goods became known as a brand, and by the twentieth century 'branding' described the whole business of building a recognisable commercial identity. The verbal noun 'branding' simply adds the gerund ending '-ing' to that root. It is worth remembering that the fiery original meaning still lingers in words like 'brandish', which once carried the idea of waving something like a flaming torch.

How the word is built

• brand (a burning mark, later a maker's mark)
• -ing (gerund/verbal noun suffix)