Burning

How to spell burning

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce burning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does burning mean?

1. adjectiveOn fire, or so hot that it feels as if it is on fire.
2. adjectiveFelt very strongly or demanding urgent attention.

Burning in a sentence

• Firefighters rescued two people from the burning building.

• He had a burning ambition to run his own company.

• She touched the burning pan and dropped it instantly.

• The meeting finally addressed the burning issue of funding.

Where does burning come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The core word burn comes from Old English, where two related verbs sat side by side: the intransitive byrnan, meaning to be on fire, and the transitive bærnan, meaning to set alight. Both trace back to a Proto-Germanic root that gave related words across the Germanic languages, including the German brennen, to burn. Over time the two Old English forms blurred together into the single modern verb burn, and the form burning is simply that verb with the present participle ending -ing, used both to describe ongoing combustion and as an adjective for anything intensely hot or fiercely felt. The figurative sense, as in a burning desire or a burning question, grew naturally from the image of something glowing and consuming, and was well established by the late Middle Ages. The spelling is reassuringly phonetic; the only mild trap is remembering the single r and single n before the -ing ending.

How the word is built

• burn (from Old English byrnan/beornan, to be on fire)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)