Tuning

How to spell tuning

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tuning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tuning mean?

1. nounThe act or process of adjusting a musical instrument so that it produces the correct pitch.
2. nounThe adjustment of an engine or machine to make it run efficiently.
3. verbAdjusting something, such as an instrument or device, to the desired state.

Tuning in a sentence

• noun

  The piano tuning took the technician most of the morning.

• noun

  The garage charged a flat fee for the engine tuning and oil change.

• verb

  She spent the afternoon tuning her guitar before the gig.

• noun

  Regular tuning keeps the old violin sounding bright.

• noun

  Careful tuning of the carburettor improved the car's fuel economy.

• verb

  The engineer was tuning the radio to a clearer frequency.

Where does tuning come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grew out of the verb 'tune', which began as a variant of 'tone'. 'Tone' came into English in the 1300s from the Old French 'ton', which in turn traced back to the Latin 'tonus', meaning 'a sound or musical pitch', and ultimately to the Greek 'tonos', meaning 'a stretching' or 'tension' (because the pitch of a string depends on how tightly it is stretched). By the late medieval period the noun 'tune' had split off as a separate word for a melody, and a verb soon followed, meaning to adjust an instrument to the correct pitch. Adding the '-ing' suffix produced 'tuning', the action of making that adjustment. The single 'n' is the spelling trap here: because 'tune' ends in a silent 'e', the 'e' is simply dropped before '-ing' and the consonant is not doubled, giving 'tuning' rather than the mistaken 'tunning'.

How the word is built

• tune (from Latin/Old French ton: a sound, tone)
• -ing (forming a gerund or present participle)