Preserving

How to spell preserving

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce preserving

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does preserving mean?

1. verbKeeping something safe from harm, loss or decay, or treating food so that it lasts.

Preserving in a sentence

• The archive is dedicated to preserving fragile historical documents.

• She spent the afternoon preserving ripe plums in sugar syrup.

Where does preserving come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb praeservare, formed from prae- meaning 'before' and servare meaning 'to keep, guard or watch over'. The original sense was protective: to keep something safe in advance, to guard it from harm or decay before any damage could set in. English took it up in the late 1300s through Old French preserver, and it carried both the broad idea of protecting from loss and the narrower, practical sense of stopping food from spoiling. The same servare root sits inside conserve, reserve and observe, all of which share that core notion of keeping or watching. Knowing the prae- 'before' element helps with the spelling, since the word keeps a single clean 'pre-' at the front rather than the 'per-' that some writers wrongly slip in.

How the word is built

• pre- (before)
• serv (from Latin servare: to keep, guard)
• -ing (verb/gerund suffix)