Scaling

How to spell scaling

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scaling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scaling mean?

1. verbAdjusting the size, extent, or proportion of something, often to make it larger or smaller in a controlled way.
2. verbClimbing up or over something steep, such as a wall, cliff, or fence.
3. verbRemoving flaky deposits, such as limescale from a kettle, plaque from teeth, or scales from a fish.

Scaling in a sentence

• The company is scaling its delivery network to reach more cities.

• The intruder was caught scaling the back fence after midnight.

• The hygienist recommended scaling the teeth twice a year to remove plaque.

• Scaling the image down kept the report under the file size limit.

• Scaling the cliff without ropes is far too dangerous for beginners.

• She stood at the sink scaling the fish before grilling it.

Where does scaling come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'scale', and the verb carries several strands of meaning that all feed into 'scaling'. The senses of climbing and of measuring proportion come from the Latin scala, meaning 'ladder' or 'flight of steps', which gave English the idea of mounting something step by step and also of a graduated row of marks for measurement. That Latin root reached English partly through Old French and Italian during the late Middle Ages, and you can still see it in 'escalator' and 'escalate'. A separate strand, the 'scale' of a fish or the flaky deposit of limescale, comes instead from a Germanic source by way of Old French escale, meaning a husk or shell that flakes away. Because all these meanings collapsed onto the same modern spelling, 'scaling' can describe climbing a cliff, resizing a design, or flaking deposits off a surface. The spelling itself is regular and rarely trips writers, since the silent 'e' of 'scale' simply drops before the '-ing' ending.

How the word is built

• scale (from Latin scala: ladder, graduated steps)
• -ing (present participle / gerund)