Hurling

How to spell hurling

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hurling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hurling mean?

1. verbThrowing something with great force, or flinging words such as insults or accusations at someone.
2. nounA fast Irish field game played with curved wooden sticks and a small ball.

Hurling in a sentence

• verb

  The toddler kept hurling his toys across the kitchen floor.

• noun

  Hurling is one of the oldest field games still played in Ireland.

• verb

  The protesters were hurling bottles at the riot police.

• noun

  He learned hurling as a boy in County Cork before moving abroad.

Where does hurling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb 'hurl' first appears in Middle English around the year 1200, written as 'hurlen', meaning to rush, to clash together, or to throw with great force. Its precise parentage is uncertain, but it is widely thought to be partly imitative of the sound and motion of a violent fling, and it may share roots with the Low German 'hurreln', meaning to throw or to dash. Over time the violent 'rush together' sense faded and the 'throw forcefully' sense became dominant in everyday English. The '-ing' ending is the ordinary native suffix that turns the verb into a participle or a verbal noun, so 'hurling' simply means the act of throwing. The same word was later adopted as the name of the ancient Irish stick-and-ball field game, because players fling, or hurl, the ball with their sticks. The spelling stays regular: a single 'l' is kept because the stress falls on the first syllable, so there is no doubling before '-ing'.

How the word is built

• hurl (to throw forcefully)
• -ing (present participle / noun suffix)