Tubing

How to spell tubing

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tubing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tubing mean?

1. nounLengths of hollow pipe, or tube material considered collectively.
2. nounThe leisure activity of floating or sliding while riding an inflated inner tube.

Tubing in a sentence

• The plumber replaced the corroded copper tubing under the sink.

• We spent the afternoon tubing down the slow stretch of the river.

• Flexible plastic tubing carries the coolant from the pump to the radiator.

• The resort offers snow tubing on a groomed hill near the lodge.

Where does tubing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word 'tube' came into English in the 1600s from the French 'tube', which itself descended from the Latin 'tubus', meaning a pipe or hollow cylinder; that Latin word was closely related to 'tuba', the long straight war-trumpet of the Romans. The original sense was simply any hollow length of pipe, whether for carrying water, air, or sound. The form 'tubing' is the native English noun built by adding the productive suffix '-ing', which here behaves like the collective '-ing' in 'piping' or 'wiring', naming the material in bulk rather than a single piece. Later, in North American leisure use, 'tubing' came to name the pastime of riding an inflated inner tube down a river or a snowy slope, drawing on the same root through the rubber tube itself. The spelling drops the final silent 'e' of 'tube' before '-ing', which is the standard English rule and the one small trap worth remembering.

How the word is built

• tube (hollow cylinder)
• -ing (noun suffix denoting material or activity)