Drawing

How to spell drawing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce drawing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does drawing mean?

1. nounA picture, sketch, or plan made with lines, usually in pencil, pen, or charcoal.
2. nounThe act of selecting winners or items at random, as in a raffle or lottery.

Drawing in a sentence

• The architect handed me a detailed drawing of the new kitchen.

• The prize drawing for the charity raffle takes place at noon.

• Her charcoal drawing of the harbour now hangs in the hallway.

• Every ticket holder was entered into the weekly drawing.

Where does drawing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the verb 'draw', which descends from the Old English dragan, meaning 'to drag, pull, or haul'. That sense of pulling something along is older than the artistic meaning: a pen or pencil is, quite literally, drawn across a surface, so a 'drawing' originally described the marks left by that pulling motion. Dragan belongs to a wider Germanic family, sharing roots with the Dutch dragen and the German tragen, both bound up with the idea of carrying or pulling. The artistic noun, a picture produced by lines, settled into English by the 1500s, while the same verb still gives us related ideas such as drawing a curtain, drawing water, and drawing a winning ticket. Because the spelling simply stacks the suffix -ing onto 'draw', the only real trap is resisting the tempting but wrong extra 'r' that some speakers hear in the middle.

How the word is built

• draw (from Old English dragan: to pull, drag)
• -ing (forming a noun or present participle)