Itching

How to spell itching

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce itching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does itching mean?

1. verbExperiencing or causing an irritating skin sensation that makes a person want to scratch.
2. verbFeeling a restless, impatient desire to do something.

Itching in a sentence

• The wool jumper kept itching against her neck all evening.

• After months indoors he was itching to get back to the office.

• His arm was itching where the mosquito had bitten him.

• The whole team was itching for the project to finally launch.

Where does itching come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb giccan (in some dialects gyccan), meaning 'to itch', which traces back to a West Germanic root shared with the Dutch jeuken and the German jucken, both still meaning 'to itch' today. The early spelling was nothing like the modern one; the soft 'gicc' sound gradually hardened and shifted into the 'itch' we now write, with the 'tch' cluster settling in to capture that short, clipped consonant. The figurative use, an 'itching' restlessness or eagerness, appeared by the 1500s, picturing a nagging desire as a literal physical irritation that demands to be scratched. The present participle is formed simply by adding -ing, but the spelling trap is real: writers must keep the 't' in the 'tch' and resist doubling anything, since 'itch' already ends in the cluster it needs.

How the word is built

• itch (from Old English giccan: to itch)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)