Differing

How to spell differing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce differing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does differing mean?

1. adjectiveNot the same as one another; varying or divergent.
2. verbIn the act of being unlike or disagreeing about something.

Differing in a sentence

• adjective

  The two reports reached sharply differing conclusions about the budget.

• verb

  The analysts kept differing over the best way to forecast sales.

• adjective

  The committee struggled to reconcile their differing views on the proposal.

• verb

  Despite differing on tactics, the partners agreed on the overall goal.

Where does differing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'differ', which English took from the Latin verb differre, meaning literally 'to carry apart' or 'to scatter'. That verb was built from the prefix dis-, meaning 'apart' or 'in different directions', joined to ferre, meaning 'to carry' or 'to bear'. English borrowed the word through Old French differer in the late 1300s, and the same Latin ferre lies behind a crowd of relatives such as 'transfer', 'refer' and 'suffer'. Curiously, differre also gave us 'defer' in the sense of putting something off, because to carry a matter apart in time is to delay it. When you add the -ing ending, the single 'r' of differ is kept and not doubled, since the stress falls on the first syllable, which is exactly the spot where writers second-guess themselves.

How the word is built

• differ (from Latin differre: to carry apart)
• -ing (present participle / verbal-adjective suffix)