Gathering

How to spell gathering

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce gathering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gathering mean?

1. nounA group of people who have come together for a shared purpose or occasion.
2. verbPresent participle of gather: in the act of collecting or bringing things or people together.

Gathering in a sentence

• noun

  The family gathering filled the whole back garden.

• verb

  She spent the morning gathering documents for the audit.

• noun

  A small gathering of colleagues met to mark her retirement.

• verb

  The volunteers were gathering donations at the door.

Where does gathering come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb gaderian, meaning 'to bring or come together', which in turn was built on the root gador, 'together'. That same root produced the everyday word 'together' and is also tied to 'good', which originally carried a sense of things that fit or belong together. Through the Middle English period the verb 'gather' kept its sense of collecting people, crops, or objects into one place, and adding the suffix -ing produced both the action of collecting and the familiar noun for an assembly of people. The spelling holds onto the soft 'th' sound and the unstressed '-er-' that adults sometimes blur in writing. It is a thoroughly native Germanic word, never borrowed from Latin or French, which is why its parts feel so plain and old.

How the word is built

• gather (Old English gaderian: to bring together)
• -ing (noun/verb suffix)