Oncoming

How to spell oncoming

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce oncoming

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oncoming mean?

1. adjectiveApproaching or moving toward you, especially traffic from the opposite direction.

Oncoming in a sentence

• The oncoming traffic forced her to wait before turning across the road.

• Dipping the headlights protects drivers in the oncoming lane from glare.

Where does oncoming come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Oncoming is a transparent English compound, built from the preposition 'on' and the verb 'come', which descends from the Old English cuman, meaning 'to move toward' or 'to arrive'. The pieces are both deeply native, going back to the Germanic ancestors of English rather than to any borrowed Latin or French source. As a single word it is comparatively young, appearing in the early nineteenth century to describe something advancing toward the observer, especially traffic on a road. The spelling is logical once you see it as 'on' plus 'coming', though writers sometimes hesitate over whether the 'c' should be doubled or a hyphen inserted; it is neither, simply on-coming fused into one smooth word. Its close relative 'forthcoming' shows the same pattern of pairing a small directional word with a form of 'come'.

How the word is built

• on (toward, approaching)
• come (Old English cuman: to move toward)
• -ing (present participle/adjective suffix)