Echoing

How to spell echoing

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce echoing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does echoing mean?

1. verbRepeating or reflecting a sound so that it is heard again, or repeating someone's words or ideas.
2. adjectiveDescribing a space that resounds with reflected sound, or a sound that lingers and repeats.

Echoing in a sentence

• verb

  The empty warehouse was echoing every footstep we took.

• adjective

  The cathedral has a vast, echoing interior that amplifies the choir.

• verb

  The report is just echoing the chief executive's earlier statement.

• adjective

  She crossed the cold, echoing hall to reach the reception desk.

Where does echoing come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the Greek ēchō, which named the reflected return of a sound and was personified in myth as a nymph who could only repeat the last words spoken to her. The Greek term passed into Latin as echo, keeping the sense of a sound thrown back from a surface, and from there into Old French and Middle English during the late 1300s. The base noun gained its verb form (to throw back or repeat a sound) and then the present participle echoing, used both for the ongoing action and as a description of spaces that ring with returned sound. The unusual ch spelling sounding like a hard k is the giveaway of the Greek origin, since Greek words borrowed through Latin regularly turn the original kappa into ch. That same Greek root survives in modern terms such as echolocation, the way bats and sonar map space by listening for returned sound.

How the word is built

• ech- (from Greek ēchō: a returned sound)
• -o (noun base)
• -ing (present participle / adjectival suffix)