Rotating

How to spell rotating

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce rotating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rotating mean?

1. verbTurning around a central point or axis.
2. adjectiveAlternating in a fixed sequence among people or duties.

Rotating in a sentence

• verb

  The fan kept rotating slowly above the office desks.

• adjective

  The hospital runs a rotating schedule of night shifts.

• verb

  The planet is rotating on its axis once every day.

• adjective

  Committee members serve on a rotating basis each quarter.

Where does rotating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb rotare, meaning 'to turn in a circle' or 'to revolve', which was itself built on the noun rota, the ordinary Latin word for 'a wheel'. English absorbed the root in the seventeenth century, when scientific and mechanical writers needed precise vocabulary for spinning bodies, and 'rotate' settled in as a verb describing motion around an axis. The present participle 'rotating' simply adds the familiar -ing ending to the base 'rotate', with the silent final e of 'rotate' dropping out before the suffix, which is exactly the spelling step writers must remember. The same rota survives in everyday English words such as 'rotary', 'rotor', and even 'roundabout' relatives like 'rotund', and in British usage a work 'rota' is still literally a turning wheel of duties. Because the spelling follows the regular drop-the-e rule and contains no hidden traps, it rarely causes serious trouble for fluent writers.

How the word is built

• rotat- (from Latin rotare: to turn)
• -ing (present participle/adjective suffix)