Upcoming

How to spell upcoming

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce upcoming

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does upcoming mean?

1. adjectiveAbout to happen or appear soon; forthcoming.

Upcoming in a sentence

• The team spent all week preparing for the upcoming product launch.

• She listed every upcoming deadline in her planner.

Where does upcoming come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound built from two of the oldest words in the language. The element 'come' descends from the Old English verb 'cuman', meaning 'to move toward' or 'to arrive', a word shared across the Germanic family. Pairing it with the directional word 'up' produced the phrasal sense of something 'coming up' or approaching in time. The combined adjective 'upcoming', meaning 'about to happen' or 'forthcoming', is actually fairly recent in this everyday sense, gaining real traction in American newspaper and business writing during the early twentieth century before spreading worldwide. Because both parts are familiar native words, the only spelling care needed is keeping it as one solid word with a single 'p' from 'up' meeting the 'c' of 'coming'.

How the word is built

• up (adverb/prefix meaning toward or forward)
• come (verb, from Old English cuman 'to move toward')
• -ing (present participle suffix forming an adjective)