Participating

How to spell participating

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce participating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does participating mean?

1. verbTaking part in an activity, event, or process alongside others.

Participating in a sentence

• Every department is participating in the annual safety review.

• She enjoyed participating in the weekend training course.

Where does participating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb participare, meaning 'to share in' or 'to partake of'. That verb was built on particeps, literally a 'partaker', which combined pars (meaning 'a part') with capere (meaning 'to take'); so to participate is, at root, to take a part. English absorbed it through late Latin and Old French during the late 1400s and 1500s, first as 'participate' and then in its inflected forms. The same capere 'to take' lurks inside a whole family of relatives such as capture, receive, and anticipate, while pars survives in part, partial, and portion. For spellers the trap is the quiet middle: the unstressed 'i' in parti-CI-pate is easy to drop, and the soft 'c' must not become an 's'.

How the word is built

• parti- (from particeps: partaker)
• cip (from capere: to take)
• -ate (verb)
• -ing (present participle)