Reaching

How to spell reaching

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reaching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reaching mean?

1. verbStretching out, especially with the hand or arm, in order to touch or grasp something.
2. verbArriving at, attaining, or making contact with something or someone.

Reaching in a sentence

• She hurt her shoulder while reaching for a book on the top shelf.

• The team is finally reaching its sales target for the quarter.

• The toddler kept reaching toward the biscuit tin on the counter.

• We had trouble reaching the supplier by phone all morning.

Where does reaching come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb reach descends from Old English raecan, meaning 'to stretch out, hold forth, or extend the hand', which belonged to a wider West Germanic family that also gave Dutch reiken and German reichen, both still meaning 'to reach or hand over'. The original sense was very physical: stretching the body or arm toward something just out of grasp. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from literal stretching to figurative senses such as arriving at a place, attaining a goal, or making contact with a person. The -ing form simply adds the regular present participle and gerund ending, and because the root already ends in a -ch sound the spelling stays tidy, with no doubled consonant and no dropped letter. The main spelling point to remember is the 'ea' vowel, which preserves the long historical vowel of raecan even though it is pronounced as a simple 'ee'.

How the word is built

• reach (from Old English raecan: to stretch out, extend)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)