Identifying

How to spell identifying

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce identifying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does identifying mean?

1. verbRecognising, naming, or establishing the identity or nature of someone or something.

Identifying in a sentence

• The police are still identifying the owner of the abandoned car.

• Identifying the cause of the leak took the plumber most of the afternoon.

Where does identifying come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin idem, meaning 'the same', which gave rise to the Late Latin verb identificare, 'to make the same' or 'to treat as identical'. From there French formed identifier, and English borrowed the verb 'identify' in the seventeenth century, originally with the sense of regarding two things as one and the same. Over time the meaning widened to today's sense of recognising or establishing what something or someone is. The form 'identifying' simply adds the present participle ending -ing to that verb. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the schwa vowel between 'ident' and the -ify makes it easy to drop or muddle a letter, and writers must also remember that the final -y of 'identify' stays as -y before -ing rather than changing.

How the word is built

• ident- (from Latin idem: the same)
• -ify (verb suffix: to make or render)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)