Suggesting

How to spell suggesting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce suggesting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does suggesting mean?

1. verbPutting an idea forward for consideration, or indicating something indirectly.

Suggesting in a sentence

• The manager is suggesting a new approach to the project.

• The data is suggesting a steady decline in sales.

Where does suggesting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of 'suggest', which comes from the Latin verb suggerere, meaning literally 'to carry or bring up from below'. It was built from sub-, meaning 'under' or 'up from beneath', and gerere, meaning 'to carry or bring', the same root that gives us 'gesture' and 'digest'. In Latin the word originally described heaping or piling something up, and from there it shifted to the idea of supplying or prompting an idea into someone's mind. English adopted it in the early 1500s, keeping the modern sense of putting forward an idea for consideration. The doubled g in the spelling is a direct fossil of the Latin assimilation of sub- to sug- before the g of gerere, which is exactly the detail that trips writers who expect a single g.

How the word is built

• sug- (variant of sub-: under, up from below)
• gest (from gerere: to carry, bring)
• -ing (present participle suffix)