Ironing

How to spell ironing

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ironing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ironing mean?

1. nounThe task of pressing clothes or fabric smooth using a heated iron.
2. nounThe clothes and linen that are waiting to be pressed with an iron.

Ironing in a sentence

• She spends every Sunday evening doing the ironing in front of the television.

• A basket of ironing sat untouched in the corner of the bedroom.

• A good steam setting makes ironing much quicker.

• She worked through a week's worth of ironing before lunch.

Where does ironing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly out of 'iron', the name of the metal, which descends from the Old English 'iren' (an earlier form was 'isern'), a thoroughly Germanic word with relatives across the old Germanic languages. The metal lent its name to the heavy implement that was heated and pressed onto cloth to smooth out creases, and from there 'iron' became a verb meaning 'to press fabric flat'. Adding the noun-forming ending '-ing' produced 'ironing', describing the activity itself and, by extension, the pile of clothes waiting for that treatment. The spelling stays close to the metal it came from, which is the useful memory hook: the awkward middle stretches as 'i-r-o-n' even though we say it more like 'eye-ern'. The silent gap between the printed letters and the spoken sound is the only thing that ever trips a writer up.

How the word is built

• iron (the metal, used as a verb for pressing cloth)
• -ing (forming a noun of activity)