Promising

How to spell promising

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce promising

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does promising mean?

1. adjectiveShowing clear signs of future success or excellence.
2. verbPresent participle of 'promise': pledging or assuring that something will happen.

Promising in a sentence

• adjective

  The young engineer had a promising career ahead of her.

• verb

  She kept promising to repay the loan by the end of the month.

• adjective

  Early sales figures looked promising for the new product.

• verb

  He is always promising more than he can actually deliver.

Where does promising come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows out of the verb 'promise', which English took in the 1300s from the Latin promissum, the past participle of promittere, meaning 'to send forth' or 'to put forward'. That verb was built from pro-, meaning 'forth' or 'forward', and mittere, meaning 'to send', so a promise was literally something you sent ahead of yourself, a commitment placed before the listener. The same mittere root sits inside a whole family of familiar words such as 'mission', 'transmit', and 'submit', all involving the idea of sending. The adjective 'promising' developed naturally from the verb: if something gives a strong hint of good things to come, it is, in effect, holding out a promise of future success. The single 'm' in the middle is worth noting, since the doubled 't' of the Latin promittere did not survive into the English spelling.

How the word is built

• pro- (forth)
• mittere (to send, via 'promise')
• -ing (adjective/participle suffix)