Sending

How to spell sending

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sending

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sending mean?

1. verbCausing a message, item, or person to go or be delivered to a destination.

Sending in a sentence

• She is sending the parcel by overnight courier.

• The office kept sending reminder emails about the deadline.

Where does sending come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the present participle of the verb 'send', which descends from the Old English 'sendan', meaning 'to cause to go' or 'to dispatch'. That verb belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close cousins in the Old Norse 'senda', the Old Frisian 'senda' and the German 'senden', all carrying the same idea of making something travel onward. The deeper root is reconstructed as a Germanic verb related to journeying or causing movement along a path. The '-ing' ending is the ordinary English participle and gerund marker, also of Old English origin, used to turn a verb into a continuing action or a noun-like form. Because 'send' ends in a single consonant after a single vowel but the stress and spelling stay regular, 'sending' simply adds '-ing' with no doubling, which is the small point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• send (Old English sendan: to cause to go)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)