Probing

How to spell probing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce probing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does probing mean?

1. adjectiveSearching deeply and persistently for information or truth.
2. verbPresent participle of probe: examining or investigating something closely.

Probing in a sentence

• adjective

  The journalist asked a probing question about the company's finances.

• verb

  Investigators are probing the cause of the warehouse fire.

• adjective

  Her probing interview style made the candidate visibly uncomfortable.

• verb

  The surgeon was probing the wound to locate the fragment.

Where does probing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin verb probare, which meant 'to test, to try, or to prove the worth of something', itself built on probus, meaning 'good, upright, or honest'. The noun probe entered English in the fifteenth century as a medical and surgical term for a slender instrument used to explore a wound, drawn from the Latin proba, 'an examination or test'. From that root English also gained the everyday words 'prove' and 'approve', all carrying the underlying idea of putting something to the test. The form 'probing' is the present participle, and by the nineteenth century it had hardened into an adjective describing searching, penetrating inquiry, as in a probing question. The single b is the quiet spelling trap, since the long 'oh' vowel can tempt writers toward a doubled consonant that the Latin root never had.

How the word is built

• prob- (from Latin probare: to test, examine)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)