Smelling

How to spell smelling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce smelling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does smelling mean?

1. verbPerceiving an odour through the nose, or giving off a particular odour.

Smelling in a sentence

• The whole kitchen was smelling of fresh coffee when she walked in.

• He kept smelling the carton to check whether the milk had turned.

Where does smelling come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

The word grows from the verb 'smell', which appears in early Middle English around 1200 as 'smel' or 'smyl', meaning both to give off an odour and to perceive one. Its deeper origin is genuinely obscure: unlike most everyday English words it has no clear matching relative in the other Germanic languages, which has long puzzled etymologists. Some scholars connect it loosely to a Low Germanic word for smoulder or burning smoke, since smoke and scent travel together, but this link is far from certain. The present-participle form simply adds the native English ending '-ing', which turns the verb into the ongoing-action form and also the noun (gerund). The spelling keeps the double 'l' of 'smell' before the '-ing', which is the only point a writer needs to watch.

How the word is built

• smell (root verb)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)