Emailing

How to spell emailing

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emailing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emailing mean?

1. verbSending a message or document to someone using electronic mail.

Emailing in a sentence

• She spent the morning emailing clients about the rescheduled meeting.

• Emailing the signed contract is faster than posting it.

Where does emailing come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'email', which is itself a clipping of 'electronic mail'. The 'mail' part is the older element: it came into English through Old French 'male', meaning a travelling bag or pouch, which in turn traces back to a Germanic word for a leather sack. Over the centuries 'mail' shifted from naming the bag in which letters were carried to naming the letters and parcels themselves, and then the whole postal system. When networked computers began carrying written messages in the early 1970s, the prefix 'e-' for 'electronic' was attached, and by the 1990s 'email' was a settled noun and verb; adding '-ing' simply turns that verb into its continuous form. The single 'l' (rather than the doubled 'll' that catches some writers) and the smooth join of 'e' to 'mail' are the main spelling points.

How the word is built

• e- (short for electronic)
• mail (post, message)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)