Hunting

How to spell hunting

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hunting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hunting mean?

1. nounThe activity of chasing and killing wild animals for food or sport.
2. nounThe act of searching determinedly for something.

Hunting in a sentence

• The estate offers deer hunting during the autumn months.

• After months of job hunting she finally signed a contract.

• He keeps a pair of dogs trained for hunting.

• House hunting in the city proved exhausting and expensive.

Where does hunting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word traces back to the Old English verb huntian, meaning 'to chase wild animals for food or sport', which is closely tied to the older noun huntoth and may share a deep root with the verb hentan, 'to seize or grasp'. The -ing ending is the native English suffix used to turn a verb into a verbal noun or a continuous participle, so hunting is simply the act of hunting. The base sense of physically pursuing game animals was broadened over the centuries to cover any determined search, so by the 1500s people spoke of hunting for treasure, bargains, or answers. Because the word is built on plain Old English stock rather than a borrowed Latin or French form, its spelling is refreshingly regular: a single consonant in 'hunt' simply gains '-ing'. The only mild trap is resisting the urge to double the final t, which English does not do here because the stressed vowel is followed by two consonants already.

How the word is built

• hunt (to chase or pursue)
• -ing (noun/gerund and present participle suffix)