Singing

How to spell singing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce singing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does singing mean?

1. verbProducing musical sounds with the voice; the present participle of sing.
2. nounThe activity or practice of producing music with the voice.

Singing in a sentence

• verb

  The choir was singing a familiar hymn as we arrived.

• noun

  His singing improved noticeably after a year of weekly lessons.

• verb

  The toddler kept singing the same line over and over in the back seat.

• noun

  The neighbours complained about the loud singing coming from the flat above.

Where does singing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the native Old English verb singan, meaning to chant or to produce musical tones with the voice. It belongs to a broad Germanic family, with close cousins such as Dutch zingen and German singen, all tracing back to a shared ancestral root for vocal music. The verb is what grammarians call strong, which is why its past tense shifts the vowel to sang and sung rather than adding an ending; the present participle, by contrast, simply takes the regular -ing ending. The single g in the root joins the -ing suffix to give one tidy g before the ending, which is the small point that trips writers who half expect a doubled consonant. Because the word is so old and so common, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable across the whole history of English.

How the word is built

• sing (Old English root meaning to produce musical sounds with the voice)
• -ing (suffix forming the present participle and verbal noun)