Nagging

How to spell nagging

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nagging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nagging mean?

1. adjectivePersistently troubling or causing low-level worry or discomfort.
2. verbContinually pestering or finding fault with someone to make them do something.

Nagging in a sentence

• adjective

  A nagging doubt kept her awake long after midnight.

• verb

  She kept nagging him to fix the dripping kitchen tap.

• adjective

  He felt a nagging pain in his lower back after the long drive.

• verb

  His constant nagging about the unpaid bills finally wore me down.

Where does nagging come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base verb 'nag' came into English from a Scandinavian source, closely related to the Old Norse and Norwegian dialect word 'nagga', meaning to gnaw, bite, or rub away at something. That older sense of slowly grinding or gnawing carried over neatly into the figurative meaning: to keep at someone with repeated small complaints is to wear them down much as constant gnawing wears down wood. The word surfaced in English only fairly recently, around the early 1800s, first in northern and dialect use before spreading into general speech. The related idea survives in phrases like a 'nagging pain', which still keeps the literal flavour of something quietly gnawing at the body. The doubled 'g' in 'nagging' is the spelling trap: because 'nag' is a short word ending in a single vowel plus a single consonant, that final consonant doubles when '-ing' is added.

How the word is built

• nag (to pester, gnaw)
• -g- (doubled consonant before suffix)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)