Shading

How to spell shading

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shading

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shading mean?

1. nounThe use of darker and lighter tones, often through close lines or graded colour, to suggest depth, shadow, or solidity in a drawing or painting.
2. nounA small gradation or subtle difference of degree, meaning, or tone.

Shading in a sentence

• The artist used careful shading to make the apple look round.

• There is a fine shading of meaning between the two words.

• Soft pencil shading gave the portrait a realistic sense of depth.

• The report noted a slight shading in public opinion over the month.

Where does shading come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the native English noun 'shade', which descends from the Old English 'sceadu', meaning a shadow or the comparative darkness cast when light is blocked. That root belongs to a wider Germanic family, related to forms in Old High German and Gothic for shadow and darkness. The verb 'to shade' developed naturally, meaning to screen from light or to darken, and from the 1600s onward artists used 'shading' for the deliberate gradation of dark and light that gives a drawing its sense of depth and form. A useful spelling reminder is that 'shading' is simply 'shade' plus '-ing', and the silent 'e' is dropped before the ending, so there is no 'e' in the middle. The same family also gives us the closely linked word 'shadow', which kept an extra syllable while 'shade' stayed short.

How the word is built

• shade (from Old English sceadu: shadow)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix; the silent 'e' of shade is dropped before the suffix)