Spraying

How to spell spraying

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spraying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spraying mean?

1. verbApplying or scattering liquid in a fine mist of droplets.

Spraying in a sentence

• The gardener spent the morning spraying the roses against greenfly.

• Workers were spraying the fence with a fresh coat of paint.

Where does spraying come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The base verb 'spray' entered English in the late 1500s, most likely from Middle Dutch 'sprayen' or a closely related Low German form meaning 'to sprinkle' or 'to scatter liquid'. The underlying sense traces back to a Germanic root suggesting the bursting or flying apart of small particles, the same family of ideas that gives us the scattering of sea foam and bursting buds. Over time the noun came to mean a cloud of fine droplets, and later a slender shoot of a plant covered in blossom, which is a separate sense from the same general image of something spread out. The present participle 'spraying' simply adds the regular '-ing' ending, and the only mild spelling point is keeping the silent-looking 'ay' before '-ing' rather than dropping or altering it. Because the verb is so common in gardening, painting, and cleaning contexts, the word feels thoroughly native even though its earliest path into English is not fully documented.

How the word is built

• spray (to scatter liquid in fine droplets)
• -ing (present participle suffix)