Enacting

How to spell enacting

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce enacting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does enacting mean?

1. verbFormally making a bill or proposal into law.
2. verbPerforming or carrying out something as if in a scene or role.

Enacting in a sentence

• Parliament spent the autumn enacting a series of tax reforms.

• The trainees were enacting a customer complaint to practise their responses.

• The council is enacting a new bylaw to limit noise after midnight.

• The children spent the afternoon enacting scenes from their favourite film.

Where does enacting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word combines the prefix en-, which carries the sense 'to make' or 'to bring into a state', with 'act', a noun and verb that English took from the Latin actus and agere, meaning 'to do, to drive, or to set in motion'. The same Latin agere lies behind a whole family of familiar words including 'agent', 'agile', and 'agenda', all of which keep the underlying idea of doing or driving something forward. 'Enact' first appeared in English in the late 1400s with the legal meaning of turning a proposal into binding law, literally making it into an act of Parliament. From that formal sense it broadened so that one can also enact a role or a scene, that is, perform it or carry it out in action. 'Enacting' is simply the present participle, and because both the prefix and the root are spelled with single consonants, the word is more regular than it looks, with no doubled letters to trip over.

How the word is built

• en- (to make, cause to be)
• act (from Latin actus, a doing)
• -ing (present participle suffix)