Summoning

How to spell summoning

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce summoning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does summoning mean?

1. verbFormally calling a person or group to come or appear, or gathering up a feeling or quality from within.
2. nounThe act of calling someone or something to come or appear.

Summoning in a sentence

• verb

  The chief executive is summoning every department head to the boardroom.

• noun

  The summoning of the full board took less than an hour to arrange.

• verb

  The court issued a notice summoning the witness to give evidence on Monday.

• noun

  A sudden summoning of the night shift signalled a serious problem at the plant.

Where does summoning come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb summonere, also written submonere, which literally meant 'to give a private hint to' or 'to remind quietly', built from the prefix sub- ('under', here in the sense of secretly) and monere ('to warn, advise, remind'). That same monere root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'monitor', 'admonish', and 'monument'. The sense hardened over time from quietly reminding someone to formally calling them to appear, and English picked it up through Old French semondre in the 1200s and 1300s, especially in legal contexts where a person was officially called before a court. The doubled m comes from the Latin sub- assimilating into summon, which is exactly the spot adults tend to second-guess. The present participle 'summoning' simply adds the -ing ending to that medieval verb, keeping the single n before -ing rather than doubling it.

How the word is built

• summon (from Latin summonere: to call up, hint to)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix)