Panicking

How to spell panicking

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce panicking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does panicking mean?

1. verbFeeling or showing sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often leading to rash behaviour.

Panicking in a sentence

• She kept panicking about the deadline instead of starting the report.

• There is no point panicking when the flight is merely delayed.

Where does panicking come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek god Pan, the goat-legged deity of woods and flocks, whose sudden, eerie shouts were said to fill travellers with unreasoning terror. The Greeks spoke of panikon, meaning a 'fear caused by Pan', and this passed into French as panique and then into English in the 1600s, first as an adjective in phrases like 'panic fear'. The noun and verb senses, describing sudden overwhelming dread, developed soon after. The tricky spelling comes from a regular English rule: when a word ending in -ic gains an ending that begins with e, i, or y, a k is inserted so the c keeps its hard sound, which is why we write panicking, picnicking, and trafficking rather than 'panicing'. Without that k, the c would suggest a soft /s/ reading, so the inserted letter is purely a guide to pronunciation.

How the word is built

• panic (from Pan, the Greek god)
• k (inserted to keep the hard /k/ sound)
• -ing (present participle suffix)