Distributing

How to spell distributing

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce distributing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does distributing mean?

1. verbGiving out or sharing something among several people or places.

Distributing in a sentence

• The volunteers spent the morning distributing food parcels to families.

• The company is responsible for distributing the product across three regions.

Where does distributing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb distribuere, which meant 'to deal out' or 'to divide among many'. It was formed from the prefix dis-, meaning 'apart' or 'in separate directions', joined to tribuere, 'to allot or assign', a verb that itself goes back to tribus, the ancient Roman 'tribe' to which payments and duties were assigned. English took the word in through the Latin past participle distributus and the related Old French forms during the late Middle Ages, settling on 'distribute' by the 1400s. The same tribuere root survives in modern relatives such as 'tribute', 'contribute', and 'attribute', all of which share the idea of assigning or handing something over. The present participle 'distributing' simply adds the -ing ending; the spelling trap lies in keeping the single 't' before 'ribut' and remembering the unstressed 'i' in the middle.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart, in different directions)
• tribut (from tribuere: to allot, assign)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)