Fearing

How to spell fearing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fearing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fearing mean?

1. verbBeing afraid of something, or worrying that something bad may happen.

Fearing in a sentence

• Fearing another delay, she left for the airport three hours early.

• The staff worked late, fearing that the deadline would slip again.

Where does fearing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the present participle of the verb 'fear', which descends from the Old English noun 'fær', meaning a sudden calamity, peril, or ambush rather than the inner emotion we now mean. The related verb 'færan' carried the sense of frightening or terrifying someone, and over the medieval period the focus shifted from the external danger to the feeling of dread it produced. The word has solid Germanic roots: it is a close cousin of the Dutch 'gevaar' and the German 'Gefahr', both still meaning 'danger' today. The '-ing' ending is the ordinary native participle suffix, so the spelling is wholly regular: take the base 'fear', which keeps its 'ea' from the older spelling, and simply add '-ing' with no doubling or dropped letter.

How the word is built

• fear (Old English fær: sudden danger)
• -ing (present participle suffix)