Exceeding

How to spell exceeding

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exceeding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exceeding mean?

1. verbPresent participle of exceed: going beyond a set limit, amount, or expectation.

Exceeding in a sentence

• The driver was caught exceeding the posted speed limit on the motorway.

• The project is already exceeding its original budget by several thousand pounds.

Where does exceeding come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the verb 'exceed', which English took in the late 1300s from the Old French 'exceder', itself from the Latin 'excedere'. That Latin verb was built from 'ex', meaning 'out' or 'beyond', joined to 'cedere', meaning 'to go' or 'to yield', so the literal sense was 'to go beyond' a boundary or limit. English kept that core idea: to exceed is to go past some agreed amount, speed, or expectation. The same 'cedere' root, which lent the spelling its tricky double 'e', also sits inside 'proceed', 'succeed', 'recede', and 'concede', though only the first two of those share the doubled 'ee' that catches writers out. The older adjective and adverb sense, as in 'exceeding joy' or 'exceeding great', flourished in the 1500s and 1600s and now reads as somewhat literary or archaic.

How the word is built

• ex- (out, beyond)
• -ceed (to go, from Latin cedere)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)