Uniting

How to spell uniting

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce uniting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does uniting mean?

1. verbJoining people or things together so that they form a single whole or act as one.

Uniting in a sentence

• The merger is uniting two rival firms under one brand.

• A shared goal has a way of uniting a divided team.

Where does uniting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'unite', which English took from the Latin verb unire, meaning 'to join together' or 'to make into one'. That verb was built directly on unus, the ordinary Latin word for 'one', the same root that gives us 'unit', 'union', 'unique' and 'universe'. English adopted 'unite' in the late 1300s and 1400s, partly through Old French, originally in the sense of joining people, lands or things into a single whole. The spelling keeps the single 'n' and the 't' of the Latin root, and the 'e' of 'unite' is dropped before the '-ing' ending, which is the small step writers most often need to get right. Because the word begins with the 'yoo' sound rather than a true vowel, it is one of those words that takes 'a uniting' rather than 'an uniting'.

How the word is built

• unit- (from Latin unire: to make one, ultimately unus: one)
• -ing (present participle)