Polling

How to spell polling

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce polling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does polling mean?

1. nounThe activity of casting votes in an election or of collecting people's opinions in a survey.
2. nounThe repeated checking of a device or program to see whether it needs servicing or has new data.

Polling in a sentence

• Polling closes at ten o'clock on election night.

• The app reduces battery drain by lowering how often polling occurs.

• The research firm used telephone polling to gauge public opinion.

• Continuous polling of the sensor kept the dashboard readings current.

Where does polling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the noun 'poll', which in Middle English (around the 1200s) meant the top or back of the head; it likely came into English from a Low German or Dutch source, where similar words described a head or rounded top. Because counting people once meant counting heads, 'poll' came to mean a numbering or tally of individuals, and by the 1600s it described the casting and counting of votes. The form 'polling' is the gerund, naming the activity of voting or of gathering opinions, and from there the related 'opinion poll' sense of measuring public attitudes developed in the twentieth century. In computing, 'polling' borrows the same idea of checking each unit in turn, as a system repeatedly asks devices whether they need attention. The single 'l' that doubles before '-ing' is the usual spelling trap, since the base word already ends in a double 'l'.

How the word is built

• poll (head, count of heads)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix)