Signaling

How to spell signaling

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce signaling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does signaling mean?

1. verbCommunicating or indicating something by means of a sign, gesture, light, or message.

Signaling in a sentence

• The driver was signaling a left turn well before the junction.

• The network outage stopped the towers from signaling to nearby phones.

Where does signaling come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word goes back to the Latin signum, meaning a 'mark', 'token', or 'standard', the same root that gives us 'sign', 'signature', and 'design'. From signum Latin formed signalis, 'relating to a sign', which passed into Old French as signal and reached English in the late Middle Ages as a noun for something that conveys a message at a distance. The verb 'to signal', meaning to communicate by such signs, developed by the early 1800s, and 'signaling' is its present participle and gerund. The single-l spelling is the standard American form: because English doubles a final consonant only when the last syllable is stressed, and 'signal' is stressed on the first syllable, American usage keeps one l, while British and Canadian writers double it to 'signalling'. That stress rule is precisely the memory hook, since it explains why the word looks lighter than many people expect.

How the word is built

• sign (a mark or token)
• -al (adjective/relational suffix)
• -ing (verbal/gerund suffix); the American single-l form keeps one l before -ing because the stress falls on the first syllable

British and American spelling

Signaling is the American spelling. British English spells it signalling.