Filming

How to spell filming

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce filming

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does filming mean?

1. verbRecording moving images with a camera, or the activity of doing so.

Filming in a sentence

• The crew spent three weeks filming the chase sequence on location.

• Filming of the new series began in early spring.

Where does filming come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word film comes from the Old English filmen, which meant a thin skin, a membrane, or a delicate coating, and it is related to the Germanic word for skin. For centuries it described any thin layer, such as the film over an eye or a film of oil on water. When photographic technology arrived in the nineteenth century, the thin coated strip used to capture images was naturally called film, and from there the word came to mean a motion picture itself. The verb to film, meaning to record moving images, grew out of this sense in the late 1800s, and filming is simply its present participle and gerund. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, the only point to remember is the single l and single m before the regular -ing ending.

How the word is built

• film (thin skin/coating, later a movie)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix)