Loosing

How to spell loosing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce loosing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does loosing mean?

1. verbPresent participle of loose: setting free, releasing, or untying something held back.

Loosing in a sentence

• The archer was loosing arrows steadily toward the distant target.

• The handler kept loosing the hounds the moment the gate opened.

Where does loosing come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the present participle of the verb 'loose', which traces back to the Old Norse word lauss, meaning 'free', 'unbound', or 'not fastened'. Norse settlers brought the word into northern English during the early medieval period, where it joined a family of related Germanic forms. As a verb, 'loose' originally meant to untie, release, or set something free, a sense still alive when an archer 'looses' an arrow or a handler 'looses' a dog. Crucially, this is a completely different word from 'lose' (to mislay or be deprived of something), whose participle is 'losing' with a single o and a soft z sound. The extra o in 'loose' and 'loosing', plus its sharp s, is exactly what keeps it apart from the far more common 'losing', and that overlap is the spelling trap most adults fall into.

How the word is built

• loose (from Old Norse lauss: free, untied)
• -ing (present participle)