Calculating

How to spell calculating

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce calculating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does calculating mean?

1. verbWorking out an amount, total, or result by using arithmetic or reasoning.
2. adjectiveColdly shrewd and self-serving, planning every move for personal advantage.

Calculating in a sentence

• verb

  She spent the afternoon calculating the total cost of the renovation.

• adjective

  Behind the friendly smile lay a cold and calculating businessman.

• verb

  The accountant is calculating how much tax the company owes.

• adjective

  Her rivals saw her as ruthless and calculating.

Where does calculating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin noun calculus, which literally meant 'a small stone' or 'pebble'. In the ancient world such pebbles were laid out on a counting board, an abacus, to perform arithmetic, so the verb calculare came to mean 'to reckon by means of counting stones'. That sense of working out figures passed into late Latin and then into English in the sixteenth century as the verb 'calculate'. From the practical idea of carefully working out a result grew a second, less flattering sense: a person described as calculating coldly works out their own advantage in advance. The same humble pebble survives in the medical word 'calculus' for a stone that forms in the body and in 'calculus' the branch of mathematics, all of which helps explain the unexpected -cul- in the middle of the spelling.

How the word is built

• calcul- (from Latin calculus: a small counting stone)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle suffix)