Throbbing

How to spell throbbing

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce throbbing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does throbbing mean?

1. adjectivePulsing or beating with a strong, rhythmic intensity, often used of pain.
2. verbBeating or pulsing with a strong, steady rhythm; the present participle of throb.

Throbbing in a sentence

• adjective

  A throbbing headache kept her awake for most of the night.

• verb

  His heart was throbbing hard as he waited for the test results.

• adjective

  He nursed his throbbing thumb after hitting it with the hammer.

• verb

  The wound was still throbbing when she changed the bandage.

Where does throbbing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb throb is of imitative origin, first recorded in English in the late 1300s, where it described the strong, rhythmic beating of the heart. The word seems to have been coined to echo the sound or feeling of a forceful pulse, much as words like throb, thump and thud all suggest heavy, repeated movement. Over time the sense widened from the heart to any insistent, pulsing sensation, including the rhythmic pain of an injury and the steady beat of an engine or piece of music. The form throbbing adds the -ing ending, and because throb ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant after a stressed syllable, the b is doubled before the suffix, which is the small spelling trap to remember. There is no Latin or Greek ancestor here; it is a homegrown English word built purely on sound.

How the word is built

• throb (to beat or pulse)
• doubled b
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)