Dancing

How to spell dancing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dancing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dancing mean?

1. verbMoving rhythmically to music, typically following a set of steps.
2. nounThe activity or art of moving rhythmically to music.

Dancing in a sentence

• verb

  The couple kept dancing until the band stopped playing.

• noun

  Dancing keeps her fit and clears her head after work.

• verb

  She spent the whole evening dancing with her old college friends.

• noun

  The community centre offers dancing classes on weeknights.

Where does dancing come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is built on the verb 'dance', which English borrowed from the Old French dancier, meaning 'to dance', a verb in use across France by the twelfth century. The deeper origin of dancier is uncertain, though many scholars trace it to a Frankish (Germanic) source meaning to stretch or draw out, perhaps describing the line of people moving in a ring. English took the word in the 1300s and quickly added its own native '-ing' ending to form both the participle and the verbal noun, giving us 'dancing'. A useful spelling clue lives in that ending: because the base 'dance' ends in a silent 'e' preceded by a soft 'c', the 'e' is dropped before '-ing' but the 'c' stays soft, so it reads as a soft sound rather than a hard 'k'. The same pattern shapes relatives such as 'glancing' and 'prancing'.

How the word is built

• danc- (from dance, via Old French dancier)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix)