Dodging

How to spell dodging

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dodging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dodging mean?

1. verbAvoiding something or someone by moving quickly aside, or by cleverly evading a duty or difficulty.

Dodging in a sentence

• The cyclist was dodging potholes all the way down the lane.

• He spent the whole meeting dodging questions about the missing funds.

Where does dodging come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

This is the present participle of the verb 'dodge', a word whose ultimate origin is genuinely murky. 'Dodge' surfaced in English in the second half of the 1500s, first meaning to move evasively, to shift about, or to follow with sudden changes of direction. Some scholars connect it to a dialect word 'dod', meaning to jog or move with a short heavy step, but no clear ancestor has ever been pinned down. From the literal idea of darting aside to escape a blow, the meaning broadened to cover the cunning avoidance of duties, debts, or awkward questions, which is why a clever scheme can still be called a 'dodge'. The -ing form simply turns the verb into its ongoing action, and because the base ends in a soft -dge, the spelling keeps the e-less stem 'dodg' before adding -ing.

How the word is built

• dodge (to move quickly aside, of uncertain origin)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)