Pouring

How to spell pouring

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pouring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pouring mean?

1. verbCausing a liquid to flow in a steady stream, or (of rain) falling heavily.

Pouring in a sentence

• She steadied the jug before pouring the cream over the dessert.

• Rain was pouring down the windscreen so hard the wipers could barely cope.

Where does pouring come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

The base verb 'pour' appears in Middle English around the 1300s, spelled in various ways such as 'pouren', but its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain and has long puzzled scholars. Some trace it to an Old French or regional dialect word, while others suspect a Celtic source meaning roughly 'to gush' or 'to flow out'; no single line of descent is firmly established. The early sense was simply to make a liquid stream from a container, and from there it grew the familiar figurative uses of rain pouring down and crowds pouring into a place. The present participle adds the ordinary '-ing' ending, but the spelling trap is the silent partner 'poring' (to study intently), a different word entirely that sounds identical. Keeping the 'ou' in 'pouring' is the memory anchor, since it shares that vowel cluster with the noun 'pour' and with 'downpour'.

How the word is built

• pour (to cause to flow)
• -ing (present participle suffix)