Brewing

How to spell brewing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce brewing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does brewing mean?

1. verbPreparing a drink such as beer, coffee, or tea by boiling, steeping, or fermenting.
2. verbGradually gathering force or beginning to develop, as a storm or conflict does.

Brewing in a sentence

• The smell of coffee brewing filled the small kitchen.

• A serious dispute was brewing between the two departments.

• The local craft company has been brewing its own beer for a decade.

• Dark clouds suggested a fierce storm was brewing over the coast.

Where does brewing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb 'breowan', meaning to make a drink such as ale by boiling, steeping, and fermenting grain. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close cousins in the Dutch 'brouwen' and the German 'brauen', all tracing back to a root tied to heat and bubbling liquid; the same ancient root lies behind 'broth' and even 'bread'. The form 'brewing' is simply the present participle, built by adding '-ing' to the base verb 'brew', which kept its single medial consonant rather than doubling it. From the literal sense of preparing beer or tea, English speakers extended the word from the 1500s onward to describe anything gathering force or forming quietly, such as a storm or trouble. The spelling trap is the 'ew' cluster: writers occasionally reach for 'brueing' or 'broowing', but the steady base 'brew' simply takes '-ing' with no extra letters.

How the word is built

• brew (Old English breowan: to make a drink by boiling and fermentation)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)