Dashing

How to spell dashing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dashing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dashing mean?

1. adjectiveStrikingly elegant, confident, and attractive in appearance or manner.
2. verbPresent participle of dash: running or moving with sudden speed.

Dashing in a sentence

• adjective

  The groom looked utterly dashing in his tailored grey suit.

• verb

  She was dashing across the platform to catch the last train home.

• adjective

  A dashing young officer arrived at the reception and charmed every guest.

• verb

  The children kept dashing between the rooms while the guests arrived.

Where does dashing come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word grows from the verb 'dash', which entered Middle English around the 1300s, probably from a Scandinavian source related to Danish 'daske', meaning to beat or strike, and reinforced by imitation of a sudden striking sound. The earliest sense was literally to strike violently or to hurl something so it shatters, and from that came the idea of moving with sudden force and speed. By the late 1700s the present participle 'dashing' had taken on a figurative, admiring sense: a person who acted with spirited energy and bold flair was said to cut a dash, and so 'dashing' came to mean lively, fashionable, and impressively stylish. The two strands survive together, one describing rapid movement and the other describing glamorous confidence. The spelling is straightforward once you remember it is simply 'dash' with the ordinary '-ing' ending, with no doubling of the final consonant because 'dash' ends in a consonant cluster.

How the word is built

• dash (to move quickly, strike)
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)