Playing

How to spell playing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce playing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does playing mean?

1. verbEngaging in a game, sport, recreation, or the performance of music or a role.

Playing in a sentence

• The children were playing in the garden all afternoon.

• She earns extra money playing the violin at weddings.

Where does playing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'play', which descends from the Old English 'plegian' (also spelled 'plegan'), meaning to exercise, to move briskly, to frolic, or to make sport. That verb traces back to a West Germanic root shared with the Old Saxon 'plegan' and the Dutch 'plegen', words that carried ideas of being busy with or attending to something. Over the centuries the sense narrowed from general lively activity toward recreation, games, and musical or dramatic performance, which is why a single word now covers children at play, a musician at the piano, and an actor on stage. The '-ing' ending that turns it into 'playing' is itself an ancient Old English suffix used to form verbal nouns and participles. Because the root simply doubles its final sounds before the vowel of '-ing' without any spelling change, the word is unusually regular and rarely trips writers up.

How the word is built

• play (to engage in activity, sport, or performance)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)