Preparing

How to spell preparing

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce preparing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does preparing mean?

1. verbMaking something or someone ready for a future event or use.

Preparing in a sentence

• She spent the morning preparing the quarterly budget report.

• The chef is preparing a meal for forty guests.

Where does preparing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb parare, which meant 'to make ready' or 'to put in order'. It was built from the prefix prae-, meaning 'before' or 'beforehand', joined to the root that gives us ideas of arranging and equipping; so the literal sense was 'to get ready ahead of time'. English took 'prepare' through Old French preparer in the 1400s, and 'preparing' is simply its present participle. The same parare root quietly survives in a family of everyday words such as 'repair', 'apparatus' and 'parade'. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: writers hear 'pre-PAIR-ing' and sometimes double the r or add an extra e, but it stays a single r with the plain -ing ending.

How the word is built

• pre- (before)
• par (from parare: to make ready)
• -ing (present participle suffix)