Nodding

How to spell nodding

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nodding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nodding mean?

1. verbMoving the head down and up, typically to show agreement or to greet, or letting it droop while becoming drowsy.
2. adjectiveDescribing a slight or superficial degree of familiarity, as in a brief acquaintance.

Nodding in a sentence

• verb

  The interviewer kept nodding to encourage the candidate to continue.

• adjective

  He had only a nodding acquaintance with the new neighbours.

• verb

  By the end of the long meeting half the room was nodding off.

• adjective

  She has a nodding familiarity with the software but rarely uses it.

Where does nodding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'nod', which appears in Middle English around the 1300s as 'nodden', meaning to incline the head quickly. Its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain, though it is widely thought to be of Low German or continental Germanic stock, related to dialect words for a quick downward movement of the head. From the start it covered both the deliberate gesture of agreement or greeting and the involuntary drooping of the head in drowsiness, which is why we still 'nod' to greet someone and 'nod off' to sleep. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: 'nod' is a single short syllable ending in one consonant after a short stressed vowel, so that final 'd' must double before '-ing', giving 'nodding' rather than 'noding'. The same doubling rule governs relatives such as 'plodding', 'prodding' and 'bedding'.

How the word is built

• nod (move the head down and up)
• -d- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -ing (present participle suffix)