Finding

How to spell finding

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce finding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does finding mean?

1. nounA conclusion or piece of information reached through investigation, research, or inquiry.
2. verbThe act of locating or discovering something, as the present participle of 'find'.

Finding in a sentence

• noun

  The key finding of the report surprised the whole committee.

• verb

  She spent the weekend finding a reliable plumber for the leak.

• noun

  Each finding was supported by the data in the appendix.

• verb

  He enjoys finding rare records at the local market.

Where does finding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb 'findan', which meant 'to come upon, to discover, or to encounter'. That verb belongs to the broad Germanic family and has close cousins in Dutch 'vinden' and German 'finden', all carrying the same idea of coming across something. The -ing ending is a native English suffix used both to form the present participle of a verb and to build nouns naming an action or its result. By the late medieval period 'finding' had settled into a noun sense meaning a thing discovered or a conclusion reached, which is why we still speak of the 'findings' of a study or an inquiry. The spelling is reassuringly regular, since 'find' simply keeps its shape and the suffix is added cleanly, with no doubled consonant because the vowel sound is long.

How the word is built

• find (Old English: to come upon)
• -ing (noun/verb suffix)