Tiring

How to spell tiring

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tiring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tiring mean?

1. adjectiveCausing fatigue or a feeling of exhaustion.

Tiring in a sentence

• The long commute across the city is genuinely tiring.

• She found the back-to-back meetings more tiring than the actual work.

Where does tiring come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the verb 'tire', which descends from the Old English teorian, meaning 'to fail, become weary, or grow exhausted'. The earliest sense leaned toward simply giving out or running short of strength, and only over centuries did it settle into the modern idea of draining someone's energy. The present participle form 'tiring' adds the suffix -ing to mark continuing action, and because English drops the silent final e before -ing, 'tire' becomes 'tiring' rather than 'tireing'. That dropped e is the heart of the spelling trap, since writers who picture the base word 'tire' are tempted to keep its e. The word is unrelated to 'tyre', the rubber wheel covering, which simply happens to share the same sound.

How the word is built

• tire (to exhaust, from Old English teorian)
• -ing (present participle suffix, with the silent e dropped before adding -ing)