Ignoring

How to spell ignoring

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ignoring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ignoring mean?

1. verbDeliberately paying no attention to a person, thing, or situation.

Ignoring in a sentence

• By ignoring the warning lights, the driver risked a costly breakdown.

• She kept ignoring his late-night messages until he finally got the point.

Where does ignoring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'ignore', which English took from the Latin ignorare, meaning 'not to know' or 'to be unacquainted with'. That Latin verb was built on a negative prefix combined with the root gno-, which carried the sense of 'knowing' and lies behind a whole family of words such as 'cognition' and 'recognise'. English borrowed 'ignore' through French in the 1600s, when it still leaned towards the original idea of simply being unaware of something. Only later, in the 1800s, did the now-dominant sense settle in: deliberately refusing to take notice of something one is perfectly aware of. The spelling trap in 'ignoring' is that the silent final 'e' of 'ignore' is dropped before the '-ing' is added, so writers must resist the urge to keep it.

How the word is built

• i- (from in-, used here as an intensive)
• gnor (from gnarus: knowing, aware)
• -ing (present participle suffix)