Throwing

How to spell throwing

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce throwing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does throwing mean?

1. verbPropelling something through the air with a movement of the arm and hand.

Throwing in a sentence

• The children spent the afternoon throwing a ball across the garden.

• She injured her shoulder while throwing the javelin at practice.

Where does throwing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb throw, which descends from the Old English thrawan, a word that originally meant 'to twist, turn, or curl' rather than to hurl an object. That older sense survives in the way a potter shapes clay by 'throwing' it on a spinning wheel, and in the way wood can 'throw' or warp. The modern meaning of propelling something through the air grew out of the idea of twisting the body to fling, and it became dominant during the Middle English period. The word shares its Germanic roots with the Old High German drahsil, a turner of wood, and the spelling kept its silent 'w' from the older form even as the pronunciation smoothed out. The main spelling care point is simply the th-r-ow cluster followed by a clean -ing, with no doubled letter, since the silent 'w' already ends the stem.

How the word is built

• throw (from Old English thrawan: to twist, turn, hurl)
• -ing (present participle suffix)