Milking

How to spell milking

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce milking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does milking mean?

1. verbThe act of drawing milk from a cow, goat, or other mammal.
2. verbGetting as much money or advantage as possible out of a person or situation.

Milking in a sentence

• The farmer began milking the herd before dawn.

• The contractor was milking the project for every extra fee he could charge.

• Modern milking machines have replaced much of the manual work.

• Critics accused the studio of milking the franchise long after it had run dry.

Where does milking come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the present participle and gerund of the verb 'milk', which descends from the Old English noun 'meolc' or 'milc', the familiar liquid produced by cows and other mammals. The same Germanic root gave Dutch 'melk' and German 'Milch', and it traces back further to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to wipe' or 'to stroke', a fitting image for the hand motion used to draw milk from an animal. The verb 'to milk' was in use very early, and by the 1500s English speakers had stretched it into a figurative sense, 'to draw money or advantage out of someone', much as one draws milk from a cow. The -ing ending simply turns the verb into a noun or continuous form; the only real spelling care is keeping the single 'k' from the base word, so the cluster is just 'lk' plus 'ing'.

How the word is built

• milk (Old English meolc, the liquid from a mammal)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)