Lowering

How to spell lowering

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce lowering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lowering mean?

1. verbBringing something down in height, level, price, or intensity.

Lowering in a sentence

• The central bank is lowering interest rates again this quarter.

• Lowering the blinds keeps the office cool in the afternoon.

Where does lowering come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This spelling sits on top of two different words that happen to look identical. The common one is built from 'low', a word English took from Old Norse 'lagr', meaning 'low' or 'humble', which displaced native equivalents during the Norse settlement of England; from the adjective came the verb 'to lower', meaning to bring down in height, level, or amount, and 'lowering' is simply its present participle. The second, older 'lowering' (also spelled 'louring') comes from the Middle English verb 'louren', meaning to frown, scowl, or look sullen, which is Germanic in origin and a relative of the Middle Dutch 'loeren', 'to lie in wait or peer'. By the 1500s writers were applying this scowling sense to a dark, threatening sky, so a 'lowering' cloud is one that looks menacing. The two share no real ancestry, which is why the same spelling carries two quite separate pronunciations, the height sense rhyming with 'mower' and the brooding sense rhyming with 'flower'.

How the word is built

• low (root, from low: not high)
• -er (comparative/verb-forming)
• -ing (present participle suffix)