Delivering

How to spell delivering

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce delivering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does delivering mean?

1. verbCarrying and handing over goods, messages, or a result to a recipient.

Delivering in a sentence

• The courier is delivering the parcel to our office this afternoon.

• The new manager is focused on delivering results before the deadline.

Where does delivering come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of 'deliver', which English took from the Old French 'delivrer' in the 1200s. That French verb grew out of the Late Latin 'deliberare', formed from 'de-' (here meaning 'away' or 'completely') and 'liberare', 'to set free', which is itself built on 'liber', 'free'. The earliest English sense was literally to free or rescue someone from danger or captivity, a meaning that survives in phrases like 'deliver us from evil'. From the idea of handing a freed person over, the word drifted toward the modern sense of handing goods or messages to a recipient, and later to producing a result or giving a speech. The shared 'liber' root links it to 'liberty' and 'liberate', and the single 'l' and single 'v' are the usual spelling slips, since writers sometimes want to double a letter that stays single.

How the word is built

• de- (away, completely)
• liver (from Latin liberare: to set free)
• -ing (present participle suffix)