Practising

How to spell practising

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce practising

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does practising mean?

1. verbPerforming an activity repeatedly to improve a skill, or carrying out an action habitually.
2. adjectiveActively engaged in a profession or in the regular observance of a faith.

Practising in a sentence

• verb

  She has been practising the piano every evening before dinner.

• adjective

  He is a practising solicitor with more than twenty years of experience.

• verb

  The team is practising free throws ahead of the weekend match.

• adjective

  Her aunt is a practising doctor at the city hospital.

Where does practising come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This is the present participle of the verb 'practise', which traces back through Old French 'practiser' and medieval Latin 'practizare' to the Greek 'praktikos', meaning 'concerned with action' or 'fit for doing', itself built on 'prassein', the verb 'to do' or 'to accomplish'. The Greek noun 'praxis', meaning 'a doing' or 'an action', is a close relative and still appears in English in its own right. English adopted the word in the 1400s, first in the sense of carrying out or performing some activity repeatedly, and later in the sense of pursuing a profession such as law or medicine. The spelling trap here is the British and Canadian convention that the verb takes an -s- ('practise', 'practising') while the noun is spelled with a -c- ('practice'); the participle keeps the verb's -s-, where American spelling uses 'practicing' with a -c- throughout. Remembering that this is the verb form is the key to choosing the -s- spelling.

How the word is built

• practis- (from Greek praktikos: concerned with action)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)

British and American spelling

Practising is the British spelling. American English spells it practicing.