Hiding

How to spell hiding

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hiding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hiding mean?

1. nounThe act or state of concealing oneself or something, or being concealed.
2. nounAn informal term for a severe beating or, by extension, a heavy defeat.

Hiding in a sentence

• The cat spent the afternoon in hiding behind the sofa.

• The home team took a real hiding in the final, losing by six goals.

• The fugitive had been in hiding for several months before the police found him.

• The visiting side took a thorough hiding in the second half, losing by five goals.

Where does hiding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb hydan, meaning 'to conceal or keep out of sight', which traces back to a Germanic root shared with words for covering and protecting. The single 'd' is the key spelling point: because the silent 'e' of 'hide' is dropped before the '-ing' ending and the vowel stays long, you write 'hiding' with one 'd', not the doubled 'dd' that catches people out (compare 'bidding' or 'ridding', which have short vowels). The '-ing' suffix turns the action of the verb into a noun, so 'hiding' can name the act of concealing oneself. A second, informal sense meaning 'a beating' emerged in the 1800s, probably from the idea of tanning an animal's hide, that is, its skin. The same hyd root also underlies 'hideout' and the leather-trade sense of 'hide', and the long-vowel-plus-single-d pattern is exactly what trips up writers who instinctively double the consonant.

How the word is built

• hide (Old English hydan: to conceal)
• -ing (forms a noun of action or state)