Findings

How to spell findings

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce findings

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does findings mean?

1. nounThe conclusions or results reached after an investigation, study, or inquiry.

Findings in a sentence

• The auditor presented her findings to the board on Friday.

• The research team published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal.

Where does findings 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', a sense that has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years. The verb belongs to a broad Germanic family, with close relatives in Dutch vinden and German finden, all tracing back to a shared ancestor meaning 'to come to' or 'to reach'. The noun 'finding' formed naturally by attaching the productive -ing suffix, which turns an action into the thing produced by that action, and English speakers were using it for 'something discovered' by the late medieval period. The plural 'findings' came to mean the conclusions or results that an inquiry, study, or investigation discovers and reports. A separate, older trade sense survives among jewellers and craftspeople, where 'findings' are the small ready-made parts (clasps, hooks, pins) that a worker keeps on hand to finish a piece. Because the spelling simply stacks find, -ing, and -s, the only thing to watch is keeping the single d and remembering the -ing before the plural.

How the word is built

• find (Old English findan: to discover)
• -ing (noun-forming suffix)
• -s (plural)