Chasing

How to spell chasing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chasing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chasing mean?

1. verbPresent participle of chase: pursuing someone or something in order to catch, reach, or obtain it.

Chasing in a sentence

• The dog kept chasing its own tail around the garden.

• She spent the whole afternoon chasing an overdue invoice payment.

Where does chasing come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'chase', which came into English in the early 1300s from the Old French 'chacier', meaning 'to hunt' or 'to pursue'. That French verb descended from the Vulgar Latin 'captiare', a frequentative built on the Latin 'captare', meaning 'to try to seize', itself from 'capere', 'to take or seize'. Because the same Latin root travelled into English by a different route, 'chase' is actually a close cousin (a doublet) of the word 'catch', which arrived through a Norman dialect form. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: the silent 'e' of 'chase' is dropped before the '-ing' is added, so it becomes 'chasing' and never 'chaseing'.

How the word is built

• chase (from Old French chacier: to hunt, pursue)
• -ing (present participle suffix)