Thinning

How to spell thinning

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce thinning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does thinning mean?

1. verbThe act of becoming or making something less thick, less crowded, or less dense.
2. adjectiveDescribing something that is gradually becoming sparser, less thick, or less full.

Thinning in a sentence

• verb

  By his forties he noticed his hair was thinning at the crown.

• adjective

  She chose a shampoo marketed for thinning hair.

• verb

  The gardener spent the morning thinning the carrot seedlings so each one had room.

• adjective

  The thinning forest could no longer hide the road from view.

Where does thinning come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'thin', which descends from the Old English adjective 'thynne', meaning slender, narrow, or not dense. That word comes from a shared Germanic ancestor, with close relatives in Dutch 'dun' and German 'dünn', all tracing back to an Indo-European root meaning 'stretched out' or 'drawn thin', which also gave Latin 'tenuis' (thin) and English 'tenuous'. The verb sense, meaning to make or become less thick or less crowded, grew naturally out of the adjective. When the suffix '-ing' is added to a short word ending in a single vowel plus a single consonant, English doubles that final consonant, which is exactly why 'thin' becomes 'thinning' with two n's rather than 'thining'. Remembering that doubling rule is the whole battle with this spelling.

How the word is built

• thin (Old English thynne: slender)
• -n- (doubled consonant before suffix)
• -ing (present participle/gerund)