Developing

How to spell developing

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce developing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does developing mean?

1. verbPresent participle of develop: growing, building, or gradually bringing something into a more advanced or fuller state.
2. adjectiveDescribing a country or economy that is still in the process of growing its industry and infrastructure.

Developing in a sentence

• verb

  The team is developing a new accounting system over the next quarter.

• adjective

  The charity funds clean water projects across the developing world.

• verb

  She spent the evening developing the photographs in her darkroom.

• adjective

  Investment flowed into several developing economies last year.

Where does developing come from?

Language of origin: French

This word descends from the Old French verb desveloper, meaning 'to unwrap' or 'to unfold', which was built from the prefix des- (expressing reversal) and a root velop that meant to wrap or roll something up. The opposite verb, envoloper, survives in English as 'envelop' and 'envelope', so the two share a buried family resemblance. English borrowed 'develop' in the 1600s, at first in the literal sense of unwrapping or unrolling, and the meaning then broadened to 'to bring out the latent possibilities of', as if unfolding what was hidden inside. By the 1800s it had gathered modern senses such as growing, expanding, and the photographic act of bringing an image out of an exposed plate. The spelling trap is real: the word keeps a single 'l' and, crucially, a single 'p', so 'developping' is wrong even though the ending sounds as though it might double.

How the word is built

• de- (un-, reverse)
• velop (root meaning to wrap or roll up)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)