Choosing

How to spell choosing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce choosing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does choosing mean?

1. verbIn the act of selecting one option from several possibilities.

Choosing in a sentence

• Choosing a reliable car took her several weekends of research.

• He spent the afternoon choosing between two job offers.

Where does choosing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of 'choose', which descends from the Old English verb 'ceosan', meaning 'to choose, taste, or try out'. That verb belonged to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives in Old High German 'kiosan' and Gothic 'kiusan', and the deep root carried a sense of testing or sampling something before settling on it. The double 'o' in the modern spelling reflects the long vowel that developed over centuries of English, while the related noun 'choice' actually arrived separately through Old French, which is why the two words look so different despite their shared meaning. The spelling trap in 'choosing' is twofold: writers must keep both letters of the 'oo' yet drop the final 'e' of 'choose', so the wrong forms 'chosing' and 'chooseing' both feel tempting. Holding onto 'choose' in your mind and simply swapping the 'e' for '-ing' is the reliable cure.

How the word is built

• choos- (from choose)
• -ing (present participle suffix); the silent 'e' of 'choose' is dropped before -ing, but the double 'o' is kept