Chewing

How to spell chewing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chewing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chewing mean?

1. verbGrinding or crushing food (or another object) repeatedly with the teeth.
2. nounThe act or process of grinding food with the teeth, used as a noun.

Chewing in a sentence

• verb

  The dentist warned him against chewing ice because it cracks the enamel.

• noun

  Loud chewing at the dinner table annoyed the other guests.

• verb

  She sat quietly chewing her sandwich during the lunch break.

• noun

  Thorough chewing helps the body digest food more easily.

Where does chewing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb chew descends from the Old English ceowan, which meant to bite and grind food with the teeth, and it traces back through the West Germanic root that also gave Dutch kauwen and German kauen, all carrying the same idea of working something with the jaws. The -ing ending is the ordinary native English suffix that turns a verb into its present participle or into a verbal noun, so chewing literally names the ongoing act of grinding with the teeth. Because the spelling keeps the original 'chew' intact before adding the suffix, the silent-looking 'ew' from the Old English 'eow' is the small trap, since the sound does not obviously map to those letters. The word has been continuous in English since Anglo-Saxon times, never borrowed from another language, which is why it feels so plain and everyday. Its close relative 'jaw' is unrelated in origin, but the homely cluster of words for eating and grinding all share this deep Germanic background.

How the word is built

• chew (Old English ceowan: to bite and grind with the teeth)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)