Bugging

How to spell bugging

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bugging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bugging mean?

1. verbContinually pestering, irritating, or annoying someone.
2. verbSecretly fitting a room, phone, or building with hidden listening devices.

Bugging in a sentence

• The constant dripping tap was bugging me all night.

• The agents were arrested for bugging the embassy offices.

• Her little brother kept bugging her for a lift into town.

• The firm denied bugging its rivals' boardroom.

Where does bugging come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'bug', whose root noun has a genuinely murky history. The noun 'bug' probably descends from Middle English 'bugge', meaning a hobgoblin or something frightening, a sense still faintly visible in 'bugbear' and 'bogey'. By the 1600s it had attached itself to creeping insects, and the verb 'to bug', meaning to pester or annoy, grew out of that insect imagery: an irritating pest that will not leave you alone. The surveillance sense is much younger, American slang of the mid twentieth century, when concealed listening devices were nicknamed 'bugs' for their small size. The spelling trap in 'bugging' is simply the doubled g: because 'bug' ends in a single consonant after a short vowel, that consonant doubles before the -ing ending.

How the word is built

• bug (root)
• doubled g (after short-vowel single consonant)
• -ing (present participle)