Rowing

How to spell rowing

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rowing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rowing mean?

1. nounThe activity or sport of propelling a boat through water using oars.
2. nounInformal British use: noisy arguing or quarrelling between people.

Rowing in a sentence

• She took up rowing at university and trained on the river each morning.

• The neighbours were rowing loudly in the garden again last night.

• The rowing club replaced two of its older boats this season.

• They spent the whole weekend rowing about money.

Where does rowing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The core verb 'row' descends from the Old English rowan, meaning 'to propel a boat with oars', and it belongs to a deep family of Germanic and Indo-European words tied to oars and steering; the same ancient root underlies the Latin remus, 'oar', and even the second half of 'rudder'. By adding the ordinary -ing ending, English forms both the present participle and the verbal noun that names the sport and pastime, a usage well established by the time competitive rowing took off on English rivers in the 1700s and 1800s. The everyday spelling trap is hidden in plain sight: the 'ow' is pronounced to rhyme with 'go', not 'cow', yet the word looks identical to the unrelated noun 'row' meaning a noisy quarrel, a piece of eighteenth-century slang of genuinely uncertain origin. Because the two share a spelling but not a sound, 'rowing' is a true heteronym, and writers occasionally pause over whether the single 'w' should be doubled before -ing (it should not). Keeping one 'w' and the plain -ing ending is all the word needs.

How the word is built

• row (to propel a boat with oars)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix)