Requiring

How to spell requiring

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce requiring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does requiring mean?

1. verbPresent participle of require: needing something as necessary, or demanding it as a condition or obligation.

Requiring in a sentence

• The new policy is requiring every employee to renew their security badge.

• The recipe is requiring two hours of slow cooking before serving.

Where does requiring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'require', which entered English in the 1300s from Old French requerre, meaning 'to ask' or 'to seek'. That French verb descended from the Latin requirere, formed from the prefix re-, here adding a sense of insistence or repetition, and quaerere, which literally meant 'to seek, ask, or search for'. The same quaerere root sits behind a whole family of English words, including 'query', 'question', 'inquire', and 'conquer', all of which carry the idea of seeking or asking. Over time the meaning hardened from merely 'to ask' into the stronger modern sense of 'to need' or 'to demand as necessary'. The spelling keeps the Latin 'qu' that always represents the 'kw' sound, and the 'i' before the 'r' is the easily slipped vowel, since speech reduces it to a faint sound.

How the word is built

• re- (again, repeatedly)
• quir (from Latin quaerere: to seek, to ask)
• -ing (present participle suffix)