Clinging

How to spell clinging

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce clinging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does clinging mean?

1. verbHolding on to something or someone tightly and refusing to let go.
2. adjectiveTending to stay close or stick to a surface, or emotionally dependent and unwilling to be apart.

Clinging in a sentence

• verb

  The toddler was clinging to her mother at the school gate.

• adjective

  The clinging ivy had spread across the whole brick wall.

• verb

  Survivors were clinging to the upturned boat when rescuers arrived.

• adjective

  His clinging behaviour after the breakup started to worry his friends.

Where does clinging come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'cling', which descends from the Old English clingan, meaning 'to shrink, shrivel, or contract'. In its earliest sense it described things that drew tightly together, such as plants withering and curling inward, and only gradually shifted toward the modern idea of holding fast and refusing to let go. The word has solid Germanic roots and is related to forms in the older Scandinavian and continental languages that all carried a notion of pressing or sticking together. The shift from 'shrivel' to 'hold tightly' happened naturally, since both ideas involve a tight, compressed grip. The spelling stays gentle: 'cling' simply takes '-ing' without doubling the final letter, because 'cling' already ends in a consonant cluster, so the double letters that trip people up in words like 'running' never arise here.

How the word is built

• cling (to hold fast, from Old English clingan)
• -ing (present participle / verbal suffix)