Recruiting

How to spell recruiting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce recruiting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recruiting mean?

1. verbEnlisting or hiring new people to join an organisation, workforce, or armed force.

Recruiting in a sentence

• The company is recruiting new sales staff this quarter.

• The navy began recruiting volunteers across the region.

Where does recruiting come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin verb crescere, meaning 'to grow', the same root that gives us 'increase' and 'crescent'. From it came recrescere, 'to grow again', which passed into French as recroître. The French noun recrue then meant 'a fresh growth' and, by extension, 'a fresh levy of soldiers', and the verb recruter meant 'to raise new troops'. English borrowed the word in the seventeenth century, first in a strictly military sense of enlisting new soldiers, before it broadened to cover hiring staff or signing up members of any kind. The tricky 'cru' followed by 'it' comes straight from the French spelling, which is why writers can stumble over the order of the vowels.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• cruit (grow, from French recrue)
• -ing (present participle)