Browsing

How to spell browsing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce browsing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does browsing mean?

1. verbLooking through goods, pages, or items in a relaxed, unhurried way without a fixed purpose.
2. verbMoving from page to page on the internet, reading or scanning content casually.
3. verbOf animals, feeding on the leaves, twigs, and shoots of shrubs and trees.

Browsing in a sentence

• She spent the afternoon browsing through the racks of vintage coats.

• He was browsing news sites during his lunch break.

• The deer were browsing on the low branches at dawn.

• He was happily browsing the shelves of the second-hand bookshop.

• The report measures how long visitors spend browsing the company website.

• The goats kept browsing the hedgerow until it was nearly bare.

Where does browsing come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows from the verb 'browse', which English took from Old French in the 1400s. The Old French verb 'brouster' meant to nibble on buds, shoots, and young leaves, and it came from the noun 'broust', a bud or fresh sprout. For its first few centuries in English the word described exactly that: cattle, deer, and goats feeding on tender twigs and foliage. Only in the 1800s did the meaning soften into the familiar idea of leafing idly through a book or wandering a shop, as if grazing among the goods. The modern sense of skimming through pages on a screen is a direct extension of that, and the steady spelling helps too: it is simply 'browse' with the silent final 'e' dropped before '-ing'.

How the word is built

• browse (to feed on shoots; to look over casually)
• -ing (present participle/gerund)