Dressing

How to spell dressing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dressing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dressing mean?

1. nounA sauce, often oil and vinegar based, used to flavour a salad or other dish.
2. nounA piece of material applied to a wound to protect it and aid healing.
3. nounA seasoned mixture, often of bread and herbs, cooked alongside or inside poultry.

Dressing in a sentence

• She whisked a light vinaigrette dressing for the salad.

• The nurse changed the dressing on his injured arm each morning.

• The family served roast turkey with a herb dressing at the holiday meal.

• The menu lists three kinds of dressing for the green leaves.

• A sterile dressing kept the cut clean while it healed.

• Grandma's cornbread dressing disappeared before the gravy did.

Where does dressing come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows from the verb 'dress', which came into English in the 1300s from the Old French 'dresser', meaning to arrange, prepare, or set in order. That French verb traces back to a Vulgar Latin form 'directiare', built on the Latin 'directus', meaning straight or set right, from 'dirigere', to guide or arrange. The earliest English sense of 'dress' was simply to make ready or put in order, so the noun 'dressing' first meant the act of preparing something. From that broad idea of preparing came the cookery use (a sauce or stuffing that prepares food for the table) and the medical use (material applied to prepare and protect a wound). The spelling keeps the doubled 's' of 'dress' before the suffix, so the only real care needed is remembering the single 'd' and the plain '-ing'.

How the word is built

• dress (from Old French dresser: to arrange, prepare)
• -ing (noun-forming suffix)