Grilling

How to spell grilling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grilling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grilling mean?

1. nounThe act of cooking food on a grill or over direct heat.
2. nounA period of intense, persistent questioning.

Grilling in a sentence

• The slow grilling of the vegetables gave them a smoky flavour.

• The new manager faced a tough grilling from the board.

• Summer evenings often end with the grilling of burgers in the garden.

• After a long grilling by detectives, the suspect changed his story.

Where does grilling come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle and gerund of the verb 'grill', which English took from the French verb 'griller', meaning to cook food on a metal grid set over heat. The French verb grew from the noun 'gril' or 'grille', a grating or gridiron, which traces back to the Latin 'craticula', literally a 'small gridiron' and a diminutive of 'cratis', meaning wickerwork or a hurdle. English adopted the word in the seventeenth century for the cooking sense, and by the nineteenth century 'grilling' had picked up a vivid figurative use: subjecting someone to fierce, sustained questioning, as though they were being roasted over the fire. The double 'l' that catches some writers is simply the original consonant doubled before the '-ing' ending, a regular rule for short-vowel verbs. The same Latin 'cratis' root also lies behind 'grate' and 'grid', so the whole family points back to a woven or barred frame.

How the word is built

• grill (cooking grid, from French gril)
• -ing (verbal/gerund suffix)