Marking

How to spell marking

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce marking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marking mean?

1. nounA visible pattern, spot, or set of lines on a surface, animal, or road.
2. nounThe act of assessing and grading written work, especially by a teacher.

Marking in a sentence

• The cat had a distinctive white marking on its chest.

• She spent the whole weekend marking exam papers.

• Fresh road marking guided drivers around the closed lane.

• The teacher fell behind on marking after the half-term break.

Where does marking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the verb and noun 'mark' plus the productive English ending '-ing', which forms nouns of action or things that result from an action. 'Mark' itself goes all the way back to the Old English 'mearc', which meant a boundary, a border, or a visible sign set up to show where one piece of land ended and another began. That sense of a delineating sign broadened over the centuries into any visible trace, spot, or written symbol, and the same ancient root survives in words like 'demarcation' and even the place name 'march' for a border region. By the time '-ing' was attached, English speakers could use 'marking' both for the act of putting marks on something and for the marks themselves, such as the patterns on an animal's coat. The spelling stays gentle and regular: a single 'k' before the suffix, no doubling, which is the one small thing writers occasionally second-guess.

How the word is built

• mark (from Old English mearc: boundary, sign)
• -ing (noun/verbal suffix)