Planning

How to spell planning

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce planning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does planning mean?

1. nounThe act or process of deciding in detail how something will be done before doing it.
2. verbPresent participle of plan: in the process of deciding and arranging something in advance.

Planning in a sentence

• noun

  Careful planning kept the wedding within budget.

• verb

  She is planning a quiet retirement by the coast.

• noun

  The council rejected the planning application for the new flats.

• verb

  They were planning their route around the worst of the traffic.

Where does planning come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word 'plan' arrived in English in the late 1600s from French, where 'plan' meant a flat surface, a ground plan, or a drawing of a building seen from above. The French term traces back to the Latin 'planum', meaning 'flat or level ground', from the adjective 'planus', 'flat'. The same Latin root lies behind 'plain', 'plane', and 'plant', all of which carry a notion of flatness or laying out. From the idea of a draughtsman's flat drawing, 'plan' broadened to mean any scheme worked out in advance, and the verb followed. The spelling 'planning' simply applies the regular English rule that a short, stressed single-vowel word ending in a single consonant doubles that consonant before '-ing'; that doubled 'n' is the only real trap, since the single-n 'planing' means something quite different (smoothing wood).

How the word is built

• plan (scheme, design)
• -n- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (verbal noun/present participle suffix)