Fostering

How to spell fostering

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fostering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fostering mean?

1. verbEncouraging or actively promoting the growth or development of something.
2. nounThe temporary care of a child by someone who is not the child's birth parent.

Fostering in a sentence

• verb

  The new policy is aimed at fostering closer ties between the two departments.

• noun

  Fostering a teenager demands patience and proper training.

• verb

  Good managers spend their time fostering talent within the team.

• noun

  The council runs an introductory course on fostering for new applicants.

Where does fostering come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb fostrian, meaning 'to nourish, to feed, or to bring up', which was itself formed from the noun fostor, meaning 'food' or 'nourishment'. That older noun belongs to the same broad Germanic family as 'food' and 'feed', so the underlying idea has always been about sustaining and rearing rather than mere supervision. Through the medieval period the sense widened from feeding a child to raising one who was not your own by birth, which is why 'fostering' came to describe taking another family's child into temporary care. Alongside that literal meaning, a figurative use developed by the 1600s, in which one could foster, that is encourage or promote, an idea, a skill, or a relationship. The spelling keeps the steady foster stem plus the ordinary -ing ending, so the only real care needed is the single 's' and single 't', echoing its sibling words food and feed.

How the word is built

• foster (Old English fostor: food, nourishment)
• -ing (verbal/noun suffix)