Tagging

How to spell tagging

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tagging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tagging mean?

1. verbAttaching a label, marker, or identifying note to something.
2. verbLinking a person, place, or topic to an online post by naming them in it.
3. verbSpraying or scrawling a personal signature or symbol on a public surface.

Tagging in a sentence

• The warehouse staff spent the morning tagging every box with a barcode.

• Tagging a colleague in the post sent them an instant notification.

• The council fined the teenagers for tagging the railway bridge with spray paint.

• Tagging each file with the project name made the folder much easier to search.

• He kept tagging his friends in the holiday photos he uploaded.

• Someone had been tagging the bus shelter with the same nickname for weeks.

Where does tagging come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base word 'tag' first appears in late Middle English, around the 1400s, where it referred to a small hanging piece, especially the dangling point at the end of a lace or strap. Its earlier origin is genuinely uncertain, though it is often linked to a Scandinavian source, since Old Norse and related languages had similar short words for a pointed or dangling bit; compare the way modern Swedish dialect words describe a tuft or loose end. Over the centuries the sense broadened from a physical metal tip to any small attached label, and then to the act of attaching such a label, giving the verb 'to tag'. When the verb takes the '-ing' ending, the single short vowel rule forces the final 'g' to double, which is exactly the spelling trap in 'tagging'. The modern world has piled on extra meanings, from spraying a graffiti signature to labelling people in a digital photo, but all of them trace back to that humble dangling tip.

How the word is built

• tag (a label or marker)
• -g- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)