Tying

How to spell tying

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tying mean?

1. verbFastening or securing something using string, rope, or a knot.
2. verbFinishing a contest or vote with an equal score, so that no side wins outright.

Tying in a sentence

• He was tying his shoelaces before the run.

• The visiting team kept tying the match in the final minutes.

• She spent the afternoon tying the parcels with twine.

• Both candidates were tying in the early polling figures.

Where does tying come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb tie, which comes from the Old English verb tigan, meaning 'to bind or fasten', and the related noun teag, meaning 'a cord, rope, or fetter'. These belong to a wider family of Germanic words about fastening and binding, and the same root lies behind the noun tie that we still use for a necktie or a railway sleeper. The spelling quirk that trips writers up comes from English convention: when a verb ends in -ie, that -ie collapses into a single -y before the -ing ending, which is why we write tying, dying, and lying rather than tieing, dieing, or lieing. The figurative sense of two contestants 'tying', meaning finishing level, grew out of the idea of being bound together as equals, and it became common in sporting and electoral language. Remembering that the bare word ends in -ie but loses the e before -ing is the key to spelling tying correctly.

How the word is built

• tie (to fasten)
• -ing (present participle); the final -ie changes to -y before the suffix, giving tying rather than tieing