Volunteering

How to spell volunteering

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce volunteering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does volunteering mean?

1. verbOffering to do work, usually unpaid, of one's own free will.

Volunteering in a sentence

• Volunteering at the food bank gave her a sense of purpose.

• He spent the summer volunteering for a local charity.

Where does volunteering come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows out of the noun 'volunteer', which English took from the French volontaire in the early 1600s. That French word came from the Latin voluntarius, meaning 'willing' or 'of one's own free will', which was built on voluntas, the Latin word for 'will' or 'wish', and ultimately on the verb velle, 'to wish' or 'to want'. The earliest English volunteers were people who offered themselves freely for military service, and only later did the word broaden to anyone who gives time or effort without being paid. The '-eer' ending, seen also in 'engineer' and 'mountaineer', marks a person who is occupied with something, and adding '-ing' turns the whole thing into the ongoing act. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: the 'volun-' is easy to slip into 'volen-', and the doubled 'e' of the '-eer' ending before '-ing' is easy to drop.

How the word is built

• volunt- (from Latin voluntas: will, wish)
• -eer (agent suffix: one who does)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix)