Schooling

How to spell schooling

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce schooling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does schooling mean?

1. nounThe education or instruction a person receives, especially at a school.
2. verbPresent participle of 'school': training, disciplining, or teaching someone or something.

Schooling in a sentence

• noun

  Her early schooling took place in a small village near the coast.

• verb

  She spent the summer schooling the young horse to accept a rider.

• noun

  He credits his success to a solid schooling in mathematics.

• verb

  The coach was patiently schooling his players in the new tactics.

Where does schooling come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The core word 'school' traces back to the Greek skholē, which originally meant 'leisure' or 'free time'. In ancient Greece, leisure was the time a free citizen could devote to discussion and study, so the sense slid from idle free time to the philosophical lectures held during it, and finally to the place where such learning happened. Latin borrowed it as schola, keeping the 'place of teaching' meaning, and the word passed into Old English as scōl long before the Norman Conquest. The added suffix -ing forms the activity noun 'schooling', meaning the process of being educated. That preserved Greek-via-Latin 'sch' cluster is exactly what makes the spelling feel slightly odd even though the word is everyday.

How the word is built

• school (place of learning, from Greek skholē)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)