Describing

How to spell describing

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce describing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does describing mean?

1. verbGiving an account in words of the qualities, features, or appearance of someone or something.

Describing in a sentence

• The witness spent an hour describing the man who took the car.

• The brochure does a good job of describing the layout of each apartment.

Where does describing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb describe, which English took from the Latin describere, meaning literally 'to write down'. That Latin verb was built from the prefix de-, here carrying the sense 'down', and scribere, 'to write', the same root that gives us scribe, script, and scripture. In its earliest Latin use it referred to copying or transcribing something in writing, and only later widened to mean setting out the details of a thing so that others could picture it. English borrowed describe in the 1400s, and the spelling has kept the Latin scrib root intact, which is the useful clue here: the awkward middle sequence -scrib- is exactly the writing root, never -scribe- once the -ing is added.

How the word is built

• de- (down)
• scrib (write)
• -ing (present participle suffix)