Gliding

How to spell gliding

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gliding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gliding mean?

1. verbMoving along in a smooth, continuous, and seemingly effortless way.
2. nounThe sport or activity of flying an engineless aircraft using rising currents of air.

Gliding in a sentence

• verb

  The swan kept gliding across the still lake without a ripple.

• noun

  He took up gliding at the local airfield after retiring from the airline.

• verb

  She crossed the polished ballroom floor, gliding between the tables.

• noun

  The club offers gliding lessons every weekend during the summer.

Where does gliding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb glidan, which meant simply 'to move along smoothly and easily', the same sense it still carries today. It belongs to a wider family of Germanic words for sliding motion, with close relatives in Dutch glijden and German gleiten, all pointing back to a shared Germanic root for slippery, frictionless movement. The -ing form is the ordinary English present participle and gerund ending, which over centuries also turned many such verbs into names for activities, so 'gliding' came to label the sport of flying an engineless aircraft on rising air. Notice that the spelling drops the silent 'e' of 'glide' before adding -ing, a regular English rule that nonetheless trips writers who expect to see the familiar 'glide' intact. There is no doubled consonant here because the stressed vowel is long, which is exactly why it is 'gliding' and not 'glidding'.

How the word is built

• glid- (from Old English glidan: to move smoothly)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)