Struggling

How to spell struggling

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce struggling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does struggling mean?

1. verbMaking a strenuous effort against difficulty, opposition, or constraint.
2. adjectiveExperiencing serious difficulty, especially in succeeding financially or competitively.

Struggling in a sentence

• verb

  He was struggling to pay the rent after losing his job.

• adjective

  The bank offered new loans to struggling small businesses.

• verb

  Many parents are struggling to balance work and childcare.

• adjective

  He spent years as a struggling writer before his first contract.

Where does struggling come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the present participle of the verb 'struggle', which appears in Middle English around the late 1300s as 'strogelen' or 'struglen', meaning to strive, contend, or wrestle against something. The deeper origin is genuinely uncertain, and most scholars admit they cannot trace it with confidence; the leading suggestion is a Scandinavian source related to Old Norse words for striving or struggling, perhaps connected to 'strugr', meaning ill will or hostility. The form may also be partly imitative, echoing the sense of laboured, repeated effort. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from physical wrestling to any difficult effort against odds, which is why we now speak of struggling with money, work, or study. The spelling trap is the doubled 'g' inherited from the base verb plus the soft '-gling' cluster, which tempts writers to drop a letter; remembering it is simply 'struggle' with '-ing' keeps the doubling intact.

How the word is built

• struggl- (from the verb struggle: to strive, contend)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)