Pressuring

How to spell pressuring

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pressuring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pressuring mean?

1. verbPressing or coercing someone insistently to do something, often against their will.

Pressuring in a sentence

• Her relatives kept pressuring her to sell the family home.

• The manager was pressuring staff into working unpaid overtime.

Where does pressuring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'pressure', which itself grew out of the noun 'pressure'. The noun came into English in the late 1300s from the Latin pressura, meaning 'a pressing' or 'the act of pressing', a noun built on premere, 'to press' (with its frequentative form pressare). For centuries 'pressure' was only a noun describing physical force or oppression, and the metaphorical sense of mental or social strain grew up later. The verb 'to pressure', meaning to urge or coerce someone, is comparatively modern and largely an American development of the early twentieth century that then spread widely. The double 's' and the 'sure' ending both trace straight back to that Latin pressura, and the same premere root sits inside relatives such as 'press', 'compress', and 'express'.

How the word is built

• press (from Latin pressare: to press)
• -ure (noun-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle suffix)