Multiplying

How to spell multiplying

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce multiplying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does multiplying mean?

1. verbPerforming the arithmetic operation of repeated addition to find a product.
2. verbIncreasing greatly in number or quantity.

Multiplying in a sentence

• Multiplying the hours worked by the hourly rate gives the weekly wage.

• Complaints were multiplying faster than the support team could handle.

• She double-checked the invoice by multiplying the unit price by the quantity.

• The bacteria kept multiplying in the warm, unrefrigerated containers.

Where does multiplying come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin multiplicare, meaning 'to increase' or 'to make many fold', which was built from multus 'much, many' and plicare 'to fold'. The literal image is of folding something over on itself again and again so that it grows, the same fold idea that sits inside 'ply', 'plait' and 'complicate'. English took the verb 'multiply' through Old French multiplier in the 1200s, first for the general sense of increasing in number and later for the precise arithmetic operation taught in schools. The present participle 'multiplying' simply adds the -ing ending, and the spelling trap is that the base verb ends in -y, which is kept (not changed to i) before -ing, giving the smooth -ying ending.

How the word is built

• multi- (many)
• -ply (fold, from Latin plicare 'to fold')
• -ing (present participle)