Partying

How to spell partying

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce partying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does partying mean?

1. verbCelebrating or enjoying oneself at a lively social gathering.

Partying in a sentence

• They spent the whole weekend partying at the music festival.

• Constant partying left him exhausted in the run-up to his exams.

Where does partying come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'party', which itself grew out of the noun 'party'. That noun came into English in the 1300s from the Old French 'partie', meaning a part, a portion, or a side in a dispute. The French word traces back to the Latin 'partire', 'to divide or share out', built on 'pars', meaning 'a part'. For centuries 'party' meant a body of people sharing a purpose, as in a political party or a search party, and only later, by the early 1700s, did it settle into the now familiar sense of a festive social gathering. The verb 'to party', meaning to celebrate, is more recent still, and its spelling trap is simple: unlike most -y verbs, the y stays put before -ing, giving 'partying' rather than 'partiing' or 'partieing'.

How the word is built

• party (a social gathering, from Old French partie)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix; the final -y is kept, not changed to -i-)