Cuddling

How to spell cuddling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cuddling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cuddling mean?

1. verbHolding someone or something close in a warm, affectionate embrace.

Cuddling in a sentence

• The couple spent the rainy afternoon cuddling on the sofa under a blanket.

• The toddler fell asleep while cuddling his favourite stuffed rabbit.

Where does cuddling come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

The word grows from the verb 'cuddle', which first appears in English around the 1500s and 1600s, though its precise parentage is genuinely murky. The most popular explanation links it to the dialect word 'couth' or 'cuddle' meaning to keep snug and warm, and it may be a softened, affectionate variant of the older 'coll', from Latin collum 'neck', since to embrace someone is to put your arms around their neck. Some scholars instead connect it to 'cull' in the sense of fondle, or treat it as simply a nursery word coined to sound cosy. Because no single source is certain, dictionaries usually mark its origin as obscure. The present participle 'cuddling' is formed in the ordinary way, but the spelling trap is real: the silent final 'e' of 'cuddle' is dropped and the existing double 'd' is kept, so writers must remember it is one 'd'-pair plus 'ling', not 'cudling' or 'cudaling'.

How the word is built

• cuddle (to hug closely)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix; the final e is dropped before -ing)