Dissenting

How to spell dissenting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dissenting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dissenting mean?

1. adjectiveExpressing or marked by disagreement with a prevailing or official opinion.
2. verbPresent participle of dissent: openly disagreeing with an accepted decision or belief.

Dissenting in a sentence

• adjective

  The judge wrote a sharply worded dissenting opinion.

• verb

  The workers kept dissenting from the new contract terms.

• adjective

  A single dissenting voice on the committee blocked the vote.

• verb

  Two board members kept dissenting throughout the meeting.

Where does dissenting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb dissentire, which combined dis- meaning 'apart' or 'differently' with sentire meaning 'to feel' or 'to think'; literally, then, it described feeling differently from others. Latin speakers used it for disagreeing in opinion, and that sense passed almost unchanged into English in the late 1400s by way of the verb 'dissent'. The root sentire is remarkably productive in English, lurking inside 'sentiment', 'consent', 'resent' and 'sentence', all of which involve feeling or judgement. The doubled s in dissenting comes straight from the Latin prefix dis- meeting the s of sentire, and that collision is exactly the spot writers stumble over, since the word sounds as though it has a single s. The participle form 'dissenting' has been used as an adjective for centuries, especially in legal and religious contexts where one party stands apart from the majority.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• sent (from Latin sentire: to feel, think)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)