Informing

How to spell informing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce informing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does informing mean?

1. verbTelling someone facts or giving them knowledge about something.
2. verbSecretly giving the police or an authority details about someone's wrongdoing.

Informing in a sentence

• Informing the public about the road closure was the council's first priority.

• He was suspected of informing on his colleagues to the management.

• She spends her mornings informing new staff of the safety rules.

• Informing on the gang to the police put her own safety at risk.

Where does informing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb inform, which English took from the Latin verb informare, meaning literally 'to give shape to' or 'to form an idea of', built from the prefix in- ('into') and forma ('shape, form'). In medieval thought the word carried the rich sense of shaping the mind by putting knowledge into it, so to inform someone was to mould their understanding. English adopted it through Old French enformer in the 1300s, and the modern meaning of passing on facts grew naturally out of that older idea of shaping a person's thoughts. The same forma root sits inside familiar relatives such as form, format, and reform, which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps a clean -form- in the middle with no doubled letters. The participle ending is simply the regular -ing added to inform.

How the word is built

• in- (into)
• form (shape, give form to)
• -ing (present participle/gerund)