Carving

How to spell carving

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce carving

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carving mean?

1. nounA figure or decorative design shaped by cutting into wood, stone, or another hard material.
2. nounThe activity of cutting a shape or design into a hard material, or of slicing cooked meat.

Carving in a sentence

• The museum displayed an ivory carving from the fourteenth century.

• He took an evening class in wood carving to relax after work.

• A wooden carving of a sleeping fox sat on the mantelpiece.

• The carving of the turkey is always left to my father at dinner.

Where does carving come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Carving descends from the Old English verb 'ceorfan', which simply meant 'to cut' and was a thoroughly Germanic word, related to forms across the West Germanic languages and ultimately to a root meaning 'to cut or scratch' that also stands behind the Greek 'graphein', meaning 'to write or scratch a mark'. In early English the word applied to all kinds of cutting, including slicing meat at the table, which is why we still 'carve' a roast today. Over the medieval period the sense narrowed and specialised toward shaping figures and decoration out of wood, stone, or ivory with a blade or chisel, and by adding the '-ing' ending the language formed both the action noun and the name for the finished object. The spelling keeps the 'v' of the modern verb 'carve' and simply attaches '-ing', so the silent final 'e' of carve is dropped before the suffix. Because the word is native rather than borrowed, it has stayed phonetically straightforward, with no surprise letters once you remember the dropped 'e'.

How the word is built

• carv- (from carve, to cut shapes from a hard material)
• -ing (noun/verbal suffix)