Sizzling

How to spell sizzling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sizzling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sizzling mean?

1. adjectiveMaking a sharp hissing sound, as food does when frying in hot fat.
2. adjectiveExtremely hot, as of weather or temperature.

Sizzling in a sentence

• The sizzling bacon filled the kitchen with its smell.

• We cancelled the hike during the sizzling afternoon heat.

• She carried the sizzling steak straight from the grill to the table.

• Tourists sought shade from the sizzling summer sun.

Where does sizzling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from 'sizzle', a verb first recorded in English in the early 1600s and built purely from imitation of sound; the soft, drawn-out 'sss' captures the hiss of fat or water meeting a hot surface. Imitative or echoic words like this are coined to mimic the noise they describe, much as 'hiss', 'fizz', and 'buzz' were, and the doubled letters often reinforce that lingering sound on the page. By the 1700s 'sizzling' was in regular use for the noise of food cooking in a pan, and from the 1800s it stretched into a figurative sense meaning intensely hot, and later vividly exciting or passionate. The double z is the spelling trap here: writers know there is a sharp buzzing sound but can be unsure whether to double the consonant, and the answer is yes, mirroring the prolonged hiss. Because it has no foreign root, the spelling simply records the sound English speakers heard.

How the word is built

• sizzle (imitative root for a frying or hissing sound)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)