Transferring

How to spell transferring

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce transferring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transferring mean?

1. verbIn the act of moving someone or something from one place, person, or account to another.

Transferring in a sentence

• The bank is transferring the funds into my savings account today.

• She spent the afternoon transferring the photos from her phone to the laptop.

Where does transferring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'transfer', which comes from the Latin transferre, meaning literally 'to carry across'. That verb was built from trans, meaning 'across' or 'beyond', and ferre, meaning 'to carry' or 'to bear'. English took it in during the late 1300s, partly through Old French, and used it first for moving something physically from one place to another before it broadened to money, property, jobs, and data. The same ferre root carries through a whole family of English words, including 'refer', 'infer', 'prefer', and 'fertile'. The doubled r in 'transferring' exists because the spoken stress falls on the final syllable of 'transfer', and English doubles a final consonant before a vowel suffix in that situation, which is exactly the spot where many writers wrongly drop one r.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• fer (Latin ferre, to carry/bear)
• -r- (doubled before suffix)
• -ing (present participle)