Orbiting

How to spell orbiting

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce orbiting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does orbiting mean?

1. verbMoving in a curved path around a planet, star, or other central body.

Orbiting in a sentence

• The weather satellite is currently orbiting the planet at a fixed altitude.

• Hundreds of pieces of debris are orbiting the earth and pose a risk to spacecraft.

Where does orbiting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin orbita, which meant the rut or track left by a wheel, and more broadly a course or path. That noun was built on orbis, meaning a circle, ring, or disk, the same root that gives us 'orb'. Astronomers borrowed orbita in the late 1600s to describe the curved path a planet or moon follows around another body, and English settled on the noun 'orbit' for that idea. The verb 'to orbit', meaning to travel in such a curved path, is much younger and came into general use in the twentieth century alongside rockets and satellites. A useful memory hook is that the spelling keeps a single 't': because the stress falls on the first syllable, the consonant is not doubled when '-ing' is added.

How the word is built

• orb- (from orbita: track, path)
• -it (orbit stem)
• -ing (present participle suffix)