Shooting

How to spell shooting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shooting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shooting mean?

1. verbPresent participle of shoot: firing a weapon, launching a projectile, or moving rapidly.
2. nounAn event in which someone is wounded or killed by a fired gun.
3. nounThe process of recording a film, video, or photographs.

Shooting in a sentence

• verb

  The hunters were shooting at the targets all afternoon.

• noun

  Police were called to investigate the shooting near the station.

• noun

  The shooting for the documentary lasted three weeks in the desert.

• verb

  The children were shooting marbles across the kitchen floor.

• noun

  The news reported a shooting that left two people injured.

• noun

  Bad weather delayed the shooting of the final scene.

Where does shooting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb sceotan, which meant to dart forward, to hurl, or to send something flying, whether an arrow, a spear, or the body itself in a quick movement. That verb belonged to a wide Germanic family, with close cousins in Old Norse skjota and Dutch schieten, all carrying the core idea of rapid forward motion. From the act of loosing an arrow, the sense broadened to firing any projectile, then to the discharge of guns, and figuratively to anything that moves or grows quickly, as in a plant that shoots up. The form 'shooting' is simply the verb with the -ing ending, which English uses both for the ongoing action and as a noun naming the event. The double 'o' faithfully records the long vowel sound, and the silent doubling never doubles the final t before -ing because the vowel is already long, which is the small spelling logic worth remembering here.

How the word is built

• shoot (from Old English sceotan: to dart, hurl, send forth)
• -ing (verbal/noun suffix)