Charting

How to spell charting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce charting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does charting mean?

1. verbRecording information on a chart or map, or plotting a course or progress.

Charting in a sentence

• The navigator spent the evening charting a safe route past the reef.

• Charting the patient's blood pressure every hour helped the team spot the decline.

Where does charting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'chart', which grew out of the noun 'chart' borrowed into English in the 1500s from the French 'charte', meaning a paper or document. That French word came in turn from the Latin 'charta', meaning a leaf of papyrus or a sheet of paper, which itself echoes the Greek 'khartes' for a papyrus sheet. The noun first described a navigator's map of coasts and seas, and from there the verb developed in the 1800s with the sense of mapping or plotting a course. Over time 'charting' broadened to mean recording any information in a table or graph, as when a nurse logs readings or an analyst tracks figures. The same Latin 'charta' also gave English 'card' and 'charter', so the silent logic of the spelling traces straight back to a humble sheet of paper.

How the word is built

• chart (a map or table of data)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)