Growing

How to spell growing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce growing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does growing mean?

1. verbThe present participle of grow: in the process of increasing in size, amount, or development.
2. adjectiveIncreasing in size, number, or intensity over time.

Growing in a sentence

• verb

  The tomatoes are growing well in the warm greenhouse.

• adjective

  There is a growing demand for affordable housing in the city.

• verb

  The company is growing faster than its rivals this year.

• adjective

  The project faced a growing list of problems before launch.

Where does growing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'grow', which descends from the Old English 'growan', meaning 'to flourish, increase, or develop'. That root was used chiefly of plants and was related to 'grass' and 'green', all of them tied to the idea of fresh living growth pushing up from the soil. The participle ending '-ing' was the regular Old English way of forming a verb form describing ongoing action, and over time '-ing' words like this one also came to act as plain adjectives, as in a 'growing concern'. The spelling stays refreshingly regular: the silent final 'w' of 'grow' is simply kept before the suffix, so it is 'growing' with the 'w' intact and no doubling. Germanic cousins survive across the family, such as German 'grünen' (to turn green) and the shared ancestry behind 'grass' and 'green'.

How the word is built

• grow (Old English growan: to flourish)
• -ing (present participle / adjectival suffix)