Fleeing

How to spell fleeing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fleeing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fleeing mean?

1. verbRunning away swiftly to escape danger, pursuit, or an unwanted situation.

Fleeing in a sentence

• The family were fleeing the floodwaters when the rescue boat arrived.

• Witnesses described a man fleeing the scene moments after the alarm sounded.

Where does fleeing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'flee', which descends from the Old English flēon, meaning 'to run away, take flight, or escape danger'. That word belonged to a wider Germanic family, sharing roots with the Dutch vlieden and the German fliehen, all carrying the sense of hurried escape. In early English 'flee' and 'fly' were closely tangled, since both described swift movement away from something, and only over time did 'flee' settle into the meaning of escaping while 'fly' kept the airborne sense. The spelling trap is simple but persistent: the base verb already ends in a double 'e', so adding '-ing' keeps both, giving 'fleeing' rather than the tempting single-e 'fleing'. The word has carried its modern meaning of running from danger or pursuit since the earliest stages of English.

How the word is built

• flee (from Old English flēon: to run away)
• -ing (present participle suffix)