Counseling

How to spell counseling

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce counseling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does counseling mean?

1. nounProfessional guidance given to help someone resolve personal, psychological, or practical difficulties.
2. verbThe act of giving someone advice or guidance about a course of action.

Counseling in a sentence

• noun

  The clinic offers free counseling to employees after a workplace accident.

• verb

  The manager spent the afternoon counseling a junior colleague on the new policy.

• noun

  The school offers free counseling to students during the exam season.

• verb

  The lawyer was counseling her client to settle the dispute quietly.

Where does counseling come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin consilium, which meant advice, deliberation, or a body of advisers, and which itself grew from consulere, to consult or take counsel. It passed into English through Old French conseil during the 1200s, originally as the noun 'counsel' meaning guidance or considered advice. The verb sense, to give advice, developed from the same root, and the gerund 'counseling' names the activity of advising. Note the family resemblance to 'council' (an assembly that deliberates) and 'consult'; counsel and council are easily confused homophones because both descend from the same deliberating Latin idea. The single-l spelling 'counseling' is the standard American form, since American practice does not double the final l before a suffix when the stress is not on that syllable.

How the word is built

• counsel (from Latin consilium: advice, deliberation)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)

British and American spelling

Counseling is the American spelling. British English spells it counselling.