Diving

How to spell diving

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce diving

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diving mean?

1. nounThe activity or sport of plunging into water, especially headfirst or underwater with equipment.
2. verbPresent participle of dive: plunging downward, headfirst, or steeply.

Diving in a sentence

• noun

  The resort offers scuba diving lessons for beginners.

• verb

  The children were diving into the deep end all afternoon.

• noun

  She won a medal in diving at the regional swimming championships.

• verb

  The seabird kept diving for fish near the harbour wall.

Where does diving come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the verb 'dive', which traces back to Old English in two related forms: 'dufan', meaning 'to sink or plunge downward', and 'dyfan', meaning 'to immerse or dip'. Both belonged to the broad Germanic family of words for going under water, and over centuries they merged into the single modern verb 'dive'. The '-ing' ending is the ordinary native suffix that turns a verb into its present participle or into a gerund naming the activity. The spelling trap is small but real: because 'dive' ends in a silent 'e', that 'e' is dropped before '-ing', giving 'diving' rather than 'diveing'. The sense broadened over time from simply sinking in water to describing the modern sport of plunging headfirst, and the spelling has stayed regular throughout.

How the word is built

• dive (root verb, with silent e dropped)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)