Exercising

How to spell exercising

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce exercising

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exercising mean?

1. verbEngaging in physical activity to improve or maintain fitness and health.
2. verbPutting a right, power, or personal quality into active use.

Exercising in a sentence

• Regular exercising in the morning left her feeling more energetic all day.

• The board is exercising its authority to veto the proposed merger.

• The doctor recommended exercising for at least thirty minutes most days.

• By exercising caution at every junction, the driver avoided an accident.

Where does exercising come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word descends from the Latin verb exercere, meaning 'to keep busy, to drive on, or to train', which was built from the prefix ex- ('out' or 'thoroughly') and the verb arcere ('to keep off, enclose, or restrain'). The literal sense was something like 'to keep continually at work', as a farmer keeps livestock moving or a soldier is kept in drill. The noun exercitium and verb passed into Old French as exercise and exercer before English adopted them in the late 1300s, first for religious practices and bodily training and later for the broad idea of putting any faculty or right to active use. The same arcere root also lies behind 'coerce', where the sense of restraining is much clearer. For spellers the trap is the quiet middle: it is spelled with an s, not a c, and never an x in the second syllable, so the cluster runs e-x-e-r-c, and the -ing simply attaches to the full base exercise.

How the word is built

• ex- (thoroughly)
• -ercise (from Latin arcere: to restrain, keep off)
• -ing (present participle suffix)