Manufacturing

How to spell manufacturing

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce manufacturing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does manufacturing mean?

1. nounThe making of goods on a large scale, especially as an industry or commercial process.
2. verbThe present participle of manufacture: in the act of producing goods from raw materials.

Manufacturing in a sentence

• noun

  The regional economy depends heavily on manufacturing and exports.

• verb

  The firm is manufacturing replacement parts at its overseas factory.

• noun

  Advances in manufacturing have lowered the cost of electric cars.

• verb

  They began manufacturing vaccines under an emergency licence.

Where does manufacturing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin manus, meaning 'hand', and facere, meaning 'to make' or 'to do'; joined together they gave the idea of something made by hand. By way of Latin manufactura and Middle French manufacture, English adopted the noun 'manufacture' in the late 1500s for goods produced by hand or by skilled work. The form 'manufacturing' developed soon after as the gerund and present participle, naming the process or activity of making things. With the Industrial Revolution the irony deepened: a word built from 'made by hand' came to describe production driven by machines and factories. The buried Latin roots are a useful spelling cue, since remembering manus plus facere explains the otherwise easily dropped 'u' in 'manu' and the 'fact' in the middle.

How the word is built

• manu- (from Latin manus: hand)
• fact (from facere: to make)
• -ure (noun forming)
• -ing (present participle / gerund)