Treating

How to spell treating

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce treating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does treating mean?

1. verbBehaving towards or dealing with a person or thing in a particular way.
2. verbGiving medical care or attention to a patient, injury, or illness.
3. verbPaying for someone else's food, drink, or entertainment as a gesture of generosity.
4. verbSubjecting a material or substance to a chemical or physical process.

Treating in a sentence

• The new manager is treating the staff with far more respect.

• The doctors are treating the infection with a course of antibiotics.

• She insisted on treating everyone to dinner for her birthday.

• The plant is treating the waste water before it returns to the river.

• They were treating the antique table with great care during the move.

• The clinic specialises in treating chronic back pain.

Where does treating come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the present participle of the verb 'treat', which came into English in the 1300s from the Old French 'traitier', meaning 'to deal with' or 'to handle'. That French word descended from the Latin 'tractare', 'to handle, manage, or work upon', which was itself a frequentative of 'trahere', meaning 'to drag or pull'. The same 'trahere' root surfaces in a whole family of English words including 'tractor', 'traction', 'tract', and 'retract', all carrying the underlying idea of pulling or drawing. Over the centuries 'treat' branched into several senses, from handling a subject in discussion, to behaving towards a person, to giving medical care, to standing someone a meal. The spelling is mercifully regular: the double 'e' of 'treat' simply takes '-ing' with no doubling or dropping, so the only real care needed is keeping that long 'ea' vowel intact.

How the word is built

• treat (handle, deal with)
• -ing (present participle suffix)