Sharing

How to spell sharing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sharing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sharing mean?

1. nounThe act of dividing something or letting others use what you have.

Sharing in a sentence

• The teacher praised the children for sharing their toys.

• The app makes file sharing between colleagues quick and secure.

Where does sharing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the noun and verb 'share', whose ancestor is the Old English 'scearu' or 'scaru', meaning a cutting or a division, closely tied to 'sceran', the verb 'to cut or shear'. The underlying idea was always one of a portion sliced off from a larger whole, which is why a 'share' of land or profit still feels like a piece divided out. The same Germanic root that gave us 'shear' (to cut wool) and 'shore' (the line where land is cut off from sea) sits behind it, all sharing the sense of separation. By the time 'share' settled into Middle English the financial and cooperative meanings were forming, and adding the ordinary '-ing' ending produced the verbal noun 'sharing'. A useful spelling note: 'share' drops its silent final 'e' before '-ing', so the word is spelled with a single 'r', never 'sharring'.

How the word is built

• share (to divide or use jointly)
• -ing (forms gerund/present participle)