Teasing

How to spell teasing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce teasing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does teasing mean?

1. verbMaking light-hearted or mildly unkind fun of someone.
2. adjectiveDeliberately provocative or tantalising, hinting at something without revealing it.

Teasing in a sentence

• verb

  His brothers were teasing him about his new haircut.

• adjective

  The advert offered only a teasing glimpse of the new car.

• verb

  The constant teasing at work began to wear on her nerves.

• adjective

  A teasing aroma of fresh bread drifted from the bakery.

Where does teasing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the verb 'tease', which comes from the Old English 'taesan', meaning 'to pluck, pull apart, or comb out'. The earliest sense was thoroughly practical: workers would 'tease' wool or flax, teasing the tangled fibres apart with combs or with the spiky seed-head of the teasel plant before spinning. From that idea of repeatedly pulling and picking at something, the word drifted into the figurative meaning of pestering or provoking a person, as if pulling at them, and by the 1600s it had softened into the familiar sense of poking gentle, playful fun. The present-participle form simply adds '-ing' to give the ongoing action. The spelling trap is the vowel pair: the long 'ee' sound is written 'ea', and there is only a single 's' before the ending.

How the word is built

• teas- (from tease: to pull apart, provoke)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix)