Vetting

How to spell vetting

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vetting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vetting mean?

1. nounThe act of examining someone or something carefully to check suitability, reliability, or safety.
2. verbPresent participle of vet: examining something carefully before approving it.

Vetting in a sentence

• noun

  The security vetting of new staff took almost a month.

• verb

  The editor is vetting every claim before the article goes to print.

• noun

  Thorough vetting of each supplier protected the company from fraud.

• verb

  The panel spent the afternoon vetting the shortlisted applicants.

Where does vetting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grew out of 'vet', which began life in the nineteenth century as a clipped, informal form of 'veterinarian' or 'veterinary surgeon', the animal doctor whose title traces back to the Latin veterinarius, meaning someone who tends beasts of burden. Just as a vet would carefully examine a horse before a sale or a race to confirm it was sound, the verb 'to vet' came to mean inspecting something thoroughly for soundness or fitness. By the early twentieth century the sense had widened well beyond animals, so that one could vet a document, a plan, or a job candidate. The gerund 'vetting' simply adds the -ing ending to that verb, and because the base ends in a single short vowel plus a single consonant, the t doubles before the suffix; that doubling is the main spelling point to remember. The same Latin root sits behind 'veterinary' itself, a tidy reminder that a careful check has its origins in the examining of horses.

How the word is built

• vet (to examine, from veterinary)
• -t- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (gerund/participle)