Encountering

How to spell encountering

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce encountering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does encountering mean?

1. verbMeeting with or coming up against something, often unexpectedly.

Encountering in a sentence

• The audit team kept encountering the same error throughout the spreadsheet.

• After encountering heavy traffic on the motorway, she arrived an hour late.

Where does encountering come from?

Language of origin: French

This word descends from the Old French verb encontrer, meaning 'to meet' or 'to come up against', which English adopted during the 1300s. The French verb was built on the Late Latin phrase in contra, where in means 'in' or 'upon' and contra means 'against', so the literal idea was of coming face to face with something or someone in opposition. Early English uses often carried a hostile flavour, describing soldiers meeting in battle, before the meaning softened to the modern sense of simply running into something or experiencing it. The same contra root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'contrary', 'counter', and 'contradict', all sharing the notion of opposition. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the 'ou' in 'coun' and the easily slurred 'ter' that becomes a faint schwa before the '-ing'.

How the word is built

• en- (in)
• counter (from Latin contra: against)
• -ing (present participle)