Residing

How to spell residing

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce residing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does residing mean?

1. verbLiving or having one's home in a particular place.
2. verbBeing inherently present or vested in something, such as a power or quality.

Residing in a sentence

• The family had been residing in the same village for three generations.

• The authority residing in the committee allows it to overturn the decision.

• Applicants currently residing abroad must provide a local contact address.

• Any charm residing in the old house came from its tangled garden.

Where does residing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'reside', which English took in the late 1400s from the Old French 'resider' and ultimately from the Latin verb 'residere'. That Latin word was built from the prefix 're-', meaning 'back' or 'behind', and the verb 'sedere', meaning 'to sit', so 'residere' literally described the act of sitting back or settling down in a place. The sense of remaining or dwelling somewhere grew naturally from that image of staying put rather than moving on. The same 'sedere' root sits inside a surprising family of English words, including 'sediment' (what settles to the bottom), 'session', and 'president' (one who sits before others). When the '-ing' ending is added, the silent 'e' of 'reside' is dropped, which is exactly the spot that trips writers who expect to see 'resideing'.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• sid- (from Latin sedere: to sit)
• -ing (present participle suffix)