Conditioning

How to spell conditioning

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce conditioning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does conditioning mean?

1. nounThe process of training a person or animal to respond in a particular way through repeated experience.
2. nounThe process of improving the body's strength, stamina, and overall fitness through exercise.
3. nounThe act of treating something, such as hair, leather, or air, to keep it in good condition.

Conditioning in a sentence

• The dog's calm reaction to the doorbell was the result of months of patient conditioning.

• The coach added sprint drills to improve the players' conditioning before the season.

• Regular conditioning kept the leather seats supple through the winter.

• Psychology students study classical conditioning and the experiments behind it.

• Poor conditioning meant she struggled to finish the second half of the race.

• The office relied on air conditioning to stay cool during the heatwave.

Where does conditioning come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word 'condition' descends from the Latin noun condicio, meaning an 'agreement' or 'stipulation', which was built from the verb condicere 'to agree upon, settle together'. That verb combines con- 'together' with dicere 'to say or speak', so the literal idea was of parties speaking together to fix terms. English took the word through Old French condicion in the 1300s, where it carried the sense of a circumstance or requirement, and over time it broadened to mean the general state of something. The verb 'to condition', meaning to bring into a desired state or to train, grew out of this in later centuries, and 'conditioning' is its verbal-noun form. The modern spelling keeps the Latin -tion ending even though the sound is a soft 'sh', which is the small trap that catches writers who hear 'condishun'. The same dicere root quietly survives in words such as 'dictate', 'verdict', and 'predict'.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• dit (from Latin dicere 'to say, agree')
• -ion (noun-forming)
• -ing (forming a verbal noun)