Raiding

How to spell raiding

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce raiding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does raiding mean?

1. verbMaking a sudden attack on, or forcibly entering, a place to seize people, goods, or information.

Raiding in a sentence

• The officers spent the night raiding warehouses suspected of holding stolen goods.

• The children kept raiding the biscuit tin before dinner.

Where does raiding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from 'raid', which is a Scottish form of the Old English word 'rad', meaning a riding or a journey on horseback, the same ancestor that gave us the modern word 'road'. In the borderlands between Scotland and England, a 'raid' came to mean a mounted military incursion into enemy territory, and the suffix '-ing' turns it into the ongoing action of carrying out such an attack. The word fell out of general use for centuries but was revived in the early 1800s, largely through the popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, who used the old border vocabulary in his historical novels. From the sense of armed horsemen, the meaning broadened to cover any sudden forceful entry, including a police raid or a plundering of supplies. The shared origin with 'road' explains why both words descend from the idea of travelling, even though their spellings and meanings have drifted far apart.

How the word is built

• raid (sudden attack/incursion)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)