Clicking
verbPressing a button or making a short, sharp snapping sound, especially with a mouse or a mechanical part.
How to spell clicking
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce clicking
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does clicking mean?
- verbPressing a button or making a short, sharp snapping sound, especially with a mouse or a mechanical part.
- verbSuddenly fitting together, making sense, or getting along well with someone.
Clicking in a sentence
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He kept clicking the mouse, hoping the frozen page would load.
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The team really started clicking after the first month together.
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A faint clicking noise from the engine worried the mechanic.
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After rereading the manual, everything was finally clicking for her.
Where does clicking come from?
Language of origin: Other
The base verb 'click' is imitative in origin, coined to echo the short, sharp sound it names. It surfaced in English around the late 1500s, and linguists connect it to similar echoic words in neighbouring languages, such as the Dutch 'klikken' and the Old French 'cliquer', both of which imitate a light snapping noise. For centuries it described physical sounds: a latch, a heel, a tongue against the roof of the mouth. The form 'clicking' simply adds the present participle ending '-ing' to that base, and because 'click' ends in the letters 'ck', no consonant is doubled. In the computer age the verb gained the now dominant sense of pressing a mouse button, and a figurative sense of two things or two people suddenly fitting together, as when an idea or a friendship 'clicks'.
How the word is built
- click (imitative base verb)
- -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)
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