Regarding

How to spell regarding

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce regarding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regarding mean?

1. prepositionWith respect to or concerning a particular matter.

Regarding in a sentence

• The email regarding the refund arrived this morning.

• She wrote to the council regarding the parking permit.

Where does regarding come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grew out of the verb 'regard', which English borrowed from the Old French 'regarder', meaning 'to watch, to look at, to pay attention to'. That French verb combined the intensifying prefix 're-' with 'garder', meaning 'to guard or keep watch', a word itself of Germanic origin and a close cousin of the English 'ward' and 'guard'. When you 'regard' something you literally turn your eyes and attention toward it, and from that idea of looking came the figurative sense of 'having to do with' a matter. By the 1600s the present participle 'regarding' had hardened into a preposition meaning 'concerning' or 'with respect to', a polished way of introducing a topic. The spelling trap is the single 'g' followed by '-ing' and the unstressed middle vowel, which sounds the same whether written 'regard' or not.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• gard (from Old French garder: to watch, guard)
• -ing (present participle used as preposition)