Reading

How to spell reading

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reading

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reading mean?

1. nounThe activity or skill of looking at and understanding written or printed words.
2. nounA value shown by a measuring instrument at a particular moment.
3. nounA particular interpretation or understanding of a text, situation, or event.

Reading in a sentence

• Reading before bed helps her wind down after work.

• The engineer recorded the meter reading at noon each day.

• Her reading of the contract differed sharply from his.

• The syllabus lists three chapters of reading for next week.

• A high blood pressure reading prompted a second test.

• The lawyer offered a careful reading of the disputed clause.

Where does reading come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb rǣdan, which originally meant 'to advise', 'to counsel', or 'to interpret', and only later narrowed to the sense of making sense of written symbols. The shift makes sense once you picture an early reader puzzling out runes or manuscript letters as a kind of riddle to be solved, since the same root gave us the word 'riddle'. Germanic cousins such as the German raten ('to guess or advise') still carry the older counselling meaning, showing how far English has travelled with this root. The form 'reading' is simply the verb plus the suffix -ing, used both as a gerund naming the activity and as a noun for a single act of interpretation or measurement. Because the root vowel is long, the spelling keeps the single 'd', and there is no doubling, which is the small point that occasionally trips writers who expect 'redding' or 'readding'.

How the word is built

• read (from Old English rǣdan: to advise, interpret, read)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)