Highlighting

How to spell highlighting

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce highlighting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does highlighting mean?

1. verbDrawing attention to something by marking it or making it stand out.
2. verbLightening selected strands of hair to a brighter colour.

Highlighting in a sentence

• The tutor suggested highlighting the key terms in yellow before the exam.

• The salon charges extra for highlighting rather than a single overall colour.

• Highlighting the most important figures made the quarterly report far easier to scan.

• Highlighting her hair every few months kept the blonde streaks looking fresh.

Where does highlighting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound built from two of the oldest words in English, 'high' and 'light', both of which descend from Old English (heah and leoht respectively) and ultimately from Germanic roots. 'Highlight' began life as a painters' and engravers' term in the early 1800s, naming the brightest, most strongly lit spots in a picture, the places where the most light appeared to fall. From that visual sense it shifted figuratively to mean the most striking or memorable part of an event, and then to the act of drawing attention to something. The '-ing' form gives us the present participle and gerund, covering both the action of emphasising and, in cosmetics, the lightening of strands of hair. The spelling preserves the now silent 'gh' of both 'high' and 'light', a fossil of consonants that were once actually pronounced in Old and Middle English.

How the word is built

• high (elevated, topmost)
• light (brightness)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix)