Maturing

How to spell maturing

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce maturing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does maturing mean?

1. verbBecoming fully developed, ripe, or grown up over time.
2. verbOf a loan, bond, or investment, reaching the date when it becomes due for payment.

Maturing in a sentence

• The cheese is maturing slowly in the cool cellar.

• The government bonds are maturing at the end of next quarter.

• The young player is maturing into a reliable leader.

• She reinvested the funds from a maturing savings certificate.

Where does maturing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'mature', which traces back to the Latin adjective maturus, meaning 'ripe', 'timely', or 'ready'. The same root sits behind the Latin noun matutinus, 'belonging to the morning', and it carried the idea of something coming to its proper season; in Roman usage maturus described fruit ready for picking and people who had reached a sound age of judgement. English absorbed the word in the late Middle Ages, partly through Old French, first as an adjective and then as a verb meaning 'to bring or come to full development'. By the seventeenth century it had picked up a precise financial sense, where a loan or bond 'matures' when it falls due, an echo of the original notion of something reaching its appointed time. The single 't' and the unstressed second syllable are the usual spelling traps, since the word sounds nothing like its tidy Latin ancestor.

How the word is built

• matur- (from Latin maturus: ripe, timely)
• -ing (present participle suffix)