Screening

How to spell screening

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce screening

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does screening mean?

1. nounThe systematic testing or examination of people to detect disease, risk, or suitability early.
2. nounA showing of a film or video to an audience.
3. nounThe process of inspecting people or items to detect threats or prohibited objects.

Screening in a sentence

• The clinic offers free cancer screening for everyone over fifty.

• The festival held a private screening of the documentary on Friday night.

• Airport screening now requires laptops to be removed from bags.

• Employers must complete background screening before the contract is signed.

• Critics attended an advance screening before the public release.

• Baggage screening delayed several passengers at the gate.

Where does screening come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word screen arrived in Middle English from the Old French escren or escran, meaning a fire guard or shield placed to block heat and light; that French word in turn traces back to a Germanic root linked to protection and covering. For centuries a screen was literally a movable partition that hid or sheltered something, and from that idea of filtering what passes through came figurative uses: a sieve that separates fine material, and later the surface on which images are projected. The gerund screening, formed by adding -ing, gathered several of these threads at once. By the early twentieth century it named the showing of a film on a screen, and in medicine and security it came to mean the systematic sifting of people or samples to catch what needs attention, exactly the sieve sense applied to information. The spelling is straightforward once you remember the silent doubling is only the single c, and the double e of screen carries straight through.

How the word is built

• screen (a partition or filter)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)