Shutting

How to spell shutting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shutting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shutting mean?

1. verbPresent participle of shut: in the act of closing or fastening something.

Shutting in a sentence

• She kept shutting the door against the cold draught.

• The council is shutting the old library at the end of the month.

Where does shutting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'shut', which comes from the Old English 'scyttan', meaning to put a bolt or bar across a door so as to fasten it. That early sense was closely tied to the idea of a bolt being shot into place, and 'shut' shares its deeper Germanic root with 'shoot', both pointing back to the notion of rapidly thrusting something forward. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from bolting a door to simply closing anything: a window, a book, a business. When the suffix '-ing' is added, the single final 't' is doubled because 'shut' is a short, stressed syllable ending in a single consonant after a single vowel, which is exactly the rule that catches writers out. The doubled 't' in 'shutting' is therefore not arbitrary; it preserves the short 'u' sound that a single 't' would leave looking like 'shuting'.

How the word is built

• shut (close)
• -ting (present participle, with consonant doubling: -ing)