Ongoing

How to spell ongoing

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ongoing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ongoing mean?

1. adjectiveContinuing to happen or develop; still in progress and not yet finished.

Ongoing in a sentence

• The building works caused ongoing delays to the morning commute.

• The company faces an ongoing investigation into its accounts.

Where does ongoing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound, built from the everyday preposition 'on' and 'going', the present participle of the very old verb 'go', both of which trace back to Old English roots that English has carried since its earliest days. The idea behind it is simply that of something that 'keeps on going', and that literal picture explains the meaning exactly: a process that has not stopped. As a settled adjective and noun it is surprisingly recent, appearing only in the nineteenth century, well after the words it is made from. The spelling trap lives entirely in the join: because we mentally hear two separate words, writers are tempted to insert a hyphen ('on-going') or a space ('on going'), yet the standard modern form is a single closed word.

How the word is built

• on (preposition: in continuous progress)
• going (present participle of 'go')