Grabbing

How to spell grabbing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grabbing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grabbing mean?

1. verbTaking hold of something suddenly or roughly; seizing or snatching.

Grabbing in a sentence

• He ran out the door, grabbing his coat on the way.

• The toddler kept grabbing at the shiny keys on the table.

Where does grabbing come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This is the present participle of the verb 'grab', which entered English in the late 1500s, most likely from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German 'grabben', meaning 'to seize' or 'to snatch'. That word belongs to a wide Germanic family of words for clutching and gripping, and it is closely related to 'grapple' and 'grasp', which share the same idea of taking firm hold. The original sense was the literal one of snatching something physically, and over time it broadened to figurative uses such as grabbing attention or grabbing an opportunity. The spelling trap lies in the doubled 'b': because 'grab' is a short word ending in a single vowel followed by a single consonant, the consonant doubles before '-ing', giving 'grabbing' rather than 'grabing'. Writers who forget this doubling rule often misspell it, which is why the double 'b' is worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• grab (to seize suddenly)
• -b- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)