Hearing

How to spell hearing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hearing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hearing mean?

1. nounThe faculty or sense by which sound is perceived.
2. nounA formal session before a court, committee, or official at which evidence and arguments are presented.

Hearing in a sentence

• Years of loud machinery damaged his hearing.

• The council scheduled a public hearing on the new parking rules.

• The clinic offers free hearing tests for anyone over sixty.

• The judge set a hearing for the following Monday.

Where does hearing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb hieran (also written heran), meaning 'to perceive sound with the ear', which in turn descends from a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch horen and German horen. The noun form was created by attaching the productive English suffix -ing, which turns a verb into a noun naming the action or its result, so a hearing is literally 'the act of hearing'. The sense of physical perception is the oldest, but by the late medieval period the word had also taken on the meaning of an opportunity to be listened to, which is why a formal legal or official session became known as a hearing. The everyday spelling trap is simple: the silent stretch is the vowel run, since hear hides inside it and writers sometimes slip toward 'heering' or muddle it with the unrelated word 'here'. Remembering that the root is the verb 'hear' keeps the spelling secure.

How the word is built

• hear (Old English hieran: to perceive sound)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)