Tutoring

How to spell tutoring

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tutoring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tutoring mean?

1. verbGiving private or small-group instruction to a student, typically in a specific subject.

Tutoring in a sentence

• She earns extra money tutoring maths in the evenings.

• The university offers free tutoring for first-year science students.

Where does tutoring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin tutor, meaning 'guardian' or 'protector', which was formed from the verb tueri, literally 'to watch over' or 'to keep an eye on'. In Roman law a tutor was someone appointed to look after a minor and that person's affairs, so the earliest sense was about protection rather than teaching. English took the noun in from Anglo-French and Old French in the late 1300s, and over time the idea of watching over a young person shaded into the idea of instructing and guiding them. The verb 'to tutor', meaning to teach privately or in a small group, grew out of that noun, and 'tutoring' is simply its gerund and present participle. A useful memory hook is that the single t in the middle, 'tut-or', reflects the Latin root, and the ending keeps the familiar pattern of dropping the silent e before adding -ing.

How the word is built

• tutor (from Latin tutor: guardian, instructor, from tueri to watch over)
• -ing (forming the gerund or present participle)