Snoring

How to spell snoring

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce snoring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does snoring mean?

1. verbBreathing with a harsh, rattling sound through the nose and mouth while asleep.
2. nounThe harsh noise a person makes while breathing during sleep.

Snoring in a sentence

• verb

  He kept the whole carriage awake by snoring on the overnight train.

• noun

  His constant snoring forced her to sleep in the spare room.

• verb

  The dog was snoring loudly on the sofa all afternoon.

• noun

  The doctor suggested that the snoring might point to a breathing problem.

Where does snoring come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the verb 'snore', which appeared in Middle English as 'snoren', meaning to breathe with a rough rattling noise while asleep. The form is essentially imitative: the very sound of the word echoes the harsh nasal rasp it describes, and it sits alongside the related verb 'snort'. Close cousins survive in other Germanic tongues, including the Dutch 'snorren', meaning to hum or drone, and similar Low German forms, all built on a 'snor-' sound cluster suggestive of nasal noise. The '-ing' ending turns the verb into both a present participle ('he is snoring') and a noun naming the activity itself ('the snoring kept her awake'). Because the spelling simply joins 'snore' (dropping the silent final 'e') to '-ing', the main thing to remember is that the 'e' disappears before the suffix.

How the word is built

• snore (from snoren, to breathe noisily in sleep)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)