Handing

How to spell handing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce handing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does handing mean?

1. verbGiving or passing something to someone directly, typically by hand.

Handing in a sentence

• She spent the morning handing out leaflets to commuters at the station.

• The teacher kept handing back the marked essays one by one.

Where does handing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is simply the present participle of the verb 'hand', which grew directly out of the noun 'hand', one of the oldest words in English. It descends from the Old English 'hand' or 'hond', a native Germanic word shared with Dutch 'hand' and German 'Hand', and it has meant the grasping part of the arm for well over a thousand years. By the late medieval period English speakers had turned the noun into a verb, so that to 'hand' something meant to pass it along using the hand. Adding the regular '-ing' ending produces 'handing', describing the ongoing act of passing or delivering something to another person. The spelling stays refreshingly logical: the single 'd' of 'hand' is never doubled, because the consonant follows another consonant rather than a short stressed vowel.

How the word is built

• hand (Old English hand: the body part, hence to pass by hand)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)