Commenting

How to spell commenting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce commenting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does commenting mean?

1. verbMaking a remark, observation, or note expressing an opinion or reaction.

Commenting in a sentence

• She spent the afternoon commenting on each report her team submitted.

• The reviewer kept commenting on the film's pacing throughout the screening.

Where does commenting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb commentari, meaning 'to consider, discuss, or devise', which itself grew from comminisci, 'to contrive or invent in the mind'. Buried inside that root is mens, the Latin word for 'mind', the same source that gives us 'mental'. By late Latin commentum had come to mean a 'note' or 'interpretation', and the word passed into English through Old French in the medieval period as a noun for an explanatory remark. The verb sense, the act of making such a remark, followed naturally, and 'commenting' is simply its present participle. The spelling trap lives at the start: the doubled m comes from the Latin prefix com- meeting the m of the root, so the word keeps two m's where many writers expect only one.

How the word is built

• com- (intensive, from Latin com-)
• ment (root from comminisci, to devise or contrive)
• -ing (present participle suffix)