Riding

How to spell riding

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce riding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does riding mean?

1. verbThe act of sitting on and controlling a horse, bicycle, or other moving thing as it travels.

Riding in a sentence

• She spent the weekend riding along the coastal trail on her bike.

• He took up riding lessons at the local stables.

Where does riding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

In its everyday sense, riding is the present participle of the verb ride, which descends from the Old English ridan, meaning to travel by sitting on and controlling a moving animal or vehicle. That verb has deep Germanic roots, with close cousins in the Dutch rijden and the German reiten, all going back to a shared ancestor meaning to be carried along. The -ing ending here is the ordinary suffix that turns a verb into its continuous form or into a verbal noun. There is also a quite separate riding, the electoral district used in Canada and historically in Britain, and its story is a curious one: it comes from the Old Norse word for a third part, which in old Yorkshire produced thriding for each of the three divisions of the county. When that word followed north, east, or west, the initial th was swallowed by the preceding sound, so north-thriding became North Riding, and the spelling settled as riding even though the two words are unrelated in origin.

How the word is built

• ride (Old English ridan: to travel on horseback)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix)