Supporting

How to spell supporting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce supporting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does supporting mean?

1. adjectiveActing to hold up, assist, back, or play a secondary part to something or someone.

Supporting in a sentence

• The engineers inspected the supporting beams beneath the bridge.

• She won an award for her supporting role in the film.

Where does supporting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb supportare, which combined the prefix sub-, meaning 'from below' or 'up', with portare, meaning 'to carry'. The literal sense was therefore 'to carry from underneath', the very image of something propping a heavy load up. It travelled into English through Old French supporter during the 1300s, at first meaning 'to endure' or 'to bear', and only later broadening to the modern senses of holding up, helping, and backing a cause or person. The same portare root carries (quite literally) through a whole family of English words, including 'porter', 'transport', and 'portable'. The double 'p' is the spelling trap: it sits at the seam where the assimilated prefix sup- meets the root port, so writers who forget the prefix tend to drop one 'p'.

How the word is built

• sup- (variant of sub-: from below/up from under)
• port (from Latin portare: to carry)
• -ing (present participle/adjective suffix)