Eating

How to spell eating

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce eating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eating mean?

1. verbThe act of consuming food; the present participle of eat.

Eating in a sentence

• She enjoys eating breakfast on the balcony before work.

• Eating slowly helps with digestion.

Where does eating come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle and gerund of the verb 'eat', which descends from the Old English etan, meaning 'to consume food'. That verb traces back through the Germanic root that also produced the Dutch eten and the German essen, and ultimately to a very old Indo-European root meaning 'to bite' or 'to gnaw'. The same ancient root surfaces in the Latin edere 'to eat', which gives English the more bookish word 'edible'. The -ing ending is a native English suffix used to form verbal nouns and continuous verb forms, and it has been productive since the earliest English. Because the spelling is fully regular, simply 'eat' plus '-ing' with no doubled consonant, the word holds few traps for a fluent writer.

How the word is built

• eat (Old English etan: to consume food)
• -ing (verbal noun / present participle suffix)