Stinging

How to spell stinging

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stinging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stinging mean?

1. adjectiveCausing a sharp, smarting pain or a burning sensation, whether physical or emotional.
2. verbPresent participle of sting: piercing or wounding with a sharp point, or producing a burning pain.

Stinging in a sentence

• adjective

  The antiseptic left a stinging pain across the cut.

• verb

  The bees kept stinging the gardener as he cleared the hive.

• adjective

  Her stinging remark about his work silenced the whole meeting.

• verb

  The cold rain was stinging his bare hands by the time he reached home.

Where does stinging come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'sting', which descends directly from the Old English stingan, meaning 'to prick, pierce, or stab'. That verb belonged to a family of Germanic words built on a root suggesting a sharp, pointed jab, and relatives survive in the Old Norse stinga and other northern tongues. For most of its history the word described the literal action of a thorn, a needle, or an insect driving something sharp into the skin, and only later did it stretch to cover the burning sensation a remark or criticism can leave behind. The spelling simply takes the base verb and adds '-ing', so the only thing to watch is keeping a single 'g' before the suffix rather than doubling it. Because 'sting' ends in a vowel followed by a single consonant after a short stressed vowel, English convention here keeps it 'stinging', not 'stingging'.

How the word is built

• sting (Old English stingan: to prick or pierce)
• -ing (present participle / adjectival suffix)