Judging

How to spell judging

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce judging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does judging mean?

1. verbForming an opinion about, assessing, or making a decision on someone or something.

Judging in a sentence

• She spent the weekend judging entries for the photography competition.

• The panel was responsible for judging each candidate fairly.

Where does judging come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin judex, meaning 'a judge', which was itself built from two older roots: jus, meaning 'law' or 'right', and dicere, meaning 'to say' or 'to declare'. A judex was therefore literally 'one who declares the law'. The related Latin verb judicare, 'to judge' or 'to decide', passed into Old French as jugier, and English borrowed it during the 1200s as the verb 'judge'. The present participle 'judging' simply adds the -ing ending, and because the base word ends in a silent -e, that -e is dropped, which is exactly the spelling point worth remembering: the soft -dg- sound is preserved by the g, so no e is needed before -ing. The same Latin roots survive in everyday relatives such as 'justice', 'judicial', and 'prejudice'.

How the word is built

• judg- (from judge, ultimately Latin judex 'one who declares the law')
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix; the silent -e of 'judge' is dropped before the ending)