Disappointing

How to spell disappointing

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce disappointing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disappointing mean?

1. adjectiveFailing to meet hopes or expectations; causing a feeling of being let down.

Disappointing in a sentence

• The hotel room was small and disappointing, despite the glossy photos online.

• Sales figures for the quarter were disappointing compared with last year.

Where does disappointing come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows out of the verb 'appoint', which English took from the Old French apointier, meaning 'to arrange', 'to settle', or 'to bring to a point', itself built on the phrase a point, literally 'to a point'. The prefix dis- was added to give the sense of undoing or reversing an arrangement, so to 'disappoint' someone originally meant to deprive them of an appointment, office, or expected possession. Over the 1400s and 1500s the meaning softened from 'to remove from a post' to the modern emotional sense of 'to fail to fulfil hopes or expectations'. The present participle 'disappointing' then came to describe anything that falls short of what was anticipated. The notorious spelling trap lives in the seam: the prefix dis- ends in a single s, and then 'appoint' begins with a single a but a doubled p, so the correct form has one s and two p's, the reverse of what many writers instinctively reach for.

How the word is built

• dis- (reversal/negation)
• appoint (from Old French apointier: to arrange, settle)
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)