Expecting

How to spell expecting

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce expecting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does expecting mean?

1. verbRegarding something as likely to happen or to arrive.
2. adjectiveBeing pregnant; awaiting the birth of a baby.

Expecting in a sentence

• verb

  The manager is expecting the report on her desk by Friday.

• adjective

  She took maternity leave because she was expecting her first child.

• verb

  We are expecting heavy traffic on the motorway this evening.

• adjective

  The couple announced they were expecting at the family dinner.

Where does expecting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb exspectare, which combined ex- meaning 'out' or 'forward' with spectare meaning 'to look at' or 'to watch'. Literally, then, it meant 'to look out for' something, the mental posture of watching the road for an arrival that has not yet come. Latin passed it into English in the 1500s, and the literal sense of waiting and watching softened into the modern sense of anticipating that something will happen. The same spectare root sits inside a whole family of familiar words such as 'spectator', 'inspect', and 'spectacle', all of which involve looking. The spelling trap is that the Latin had a hidden 's' (exspectare) that English quietly dropped, and the modern 'ct' cluster is easy to mishear, so writers sometimes leave it out or slip in an extra letter.

How the word is built

• ex- (out, forward)
• spect (from spectare: to look, watch)
• -ing (present participle suffix)