Greeting

How to spell greeting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce greeting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does greeting mean?

1. nounA polite word, message, or gesture of welcome or acknowledgement.

Greeting in a sentence

• The hotel staff offered a warm greeting to every guest who arrived.

• She ended the letter with a friendly greeting for the whole family.

Where does greeting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb grētan, which meant 'to approach', 'to address', or 'to come into contact with', and only later narrowed to the friendly sense of welcoming someone. The verb was common across the older Germanic languages; the Dutch groeten and the German grüssen are close cousins that still carry the same meaning today. The form 'greeting' is simply the verb with the suffix -ing attached, used both as a noun for the words or gesture of welcome and as the present participle of the act itself. The spelling stayed remarkably steady over the centuries, keeping the double e from the Old English stem. The main thing to watch is the single t before -ing, since the short vowel and the doubled e can tempt writers toward extra letters.

How the word is built

• greet (Old English grētan: to approach, address)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)