Nominating

How to spell nominating

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce nominating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nominating mean?

1. verbFormally proposing someone for a position, award, or honour.

Nominating in a sentence

• The committee is nominating three candidates for the leadership role.

• The staff are nominating her for employee of the year.

Where does nominating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb nominare, which meant 'to name' or 'to call by name', built directly on the noun nomen, meaning simply 'a name'. In classical use it carried the sense of formally naming or designating someone, and that official flavour survives in modern English. The form entered English in the sixteenth century, when 'nominate' came to mean putting forward a person's name for an office, an honour, or a position. The same Latin nomen lies behind a whole family of familiar words, including 'noun', 'nominal', 'denomination', and even 'noun' itself, so the central -nomin- spelling that means 'name' is the part worth fixing in memory. The spelling trap in 'nominating' is purely mechanical: the silent 'e' of 'nominate' is dropped before adding -ing, and the single 'n' in the middle is never doubled.

How the word is built

• nomin- (from Latin nomen: name)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle)