Realizing

How to spell realizing

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce realizing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does realizing mean?

1. verbComing to understand or become fully aware of a fact or situation.
2. verbBringing something into reality, or converting an asset into actual money.

Realizing in a sentence

• After realizing the deadline had passed, she emailed the client to apologise.

• The company is finally realizing its long-term expansion plans this year.

• He kept driving without realizing he had taken the wrong exit.

• By selling the shares now, she is realizing a substantial profit.

Where does realizing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin realis, meaning 'actual' or 'relating to things', which itself was built on res, the ordinary Latin word for a 'thing' or 'matter'. French turned this into realiser, meaning 'to make real or bring into being', and English adopted the verb 'realize' in the early 1600s with that same sense of making something concrete. Only later, in the 1700s, did the now-dominant mental sense develop: to make something fully real in one's own mind, that is, to grasp or understand it clearly. The Greek-derived suffix -ize signals an action of turning something into a state, and adding -ing gives the continuous form 'realizing'. The same res root survives in everyday relatives such as 'real', 'reality', and even 'republic' (from res publica, literally 'the public thing'). The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel and the choice of z, which the -ize ending settles cleanly.

How the word is built

• real (from Latin realis: actual, relating to things)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (present participle ending)

British and American spelling

Realizing is the American spelling. British English spells it realising.