Soaring

How to spell soaring

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce soaring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does soaring mean?

1. verbFlying or gliding high in the air, usually without flapping or effort.
2. adjectiveIncreasing rapidly to a high level, as with prices, costs, or numbers.

Soaring in a sentence

• verb

  The eagle kept soaring above the valley on the warm air currents.

• adjective

  Soaring energy bills forced the family to rethink their budget.

• verb

  We watched the glider soaring silently over the ridge.

• adjective

  The company blamed soaring fuel prices for the higher fares.

Where does soaring come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'soar' came into English in the late 1300s from Old French 'essorer', meaning to expose to the air or to fly up, which descended from an unrecorded Late Latin form 'exaurare', built from the Latin 'ex' meaning 'out' and 'aura' meaning 'breeze' or 'air'. The original picture was of a bird letting itself rise on a current of air, exactly the gliding flight that the word still names today. From this literal sense of birds riding the wind, English extended 'soar' to anything that climbs steeply, so that prices, temperatures and ambitions can all soar. The participle 'soaring' simply adds the regular '-ing' ending, and because 'soar' ends in a single vowel sound spelled 'oar', writers sometimes confuse it with the homophone 'sore'; remembering the airy Latin 'aura' behind it helps fix the 'oar' spelling.

How the word is built

• soar (to fly high, rise)
• -ing (present participle / adjectival suffix)