Waging

How to spell waging

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce waging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does waging mean?

1. verbActively carrying on or pursuing a war, battle, or organised campaign.

Waging in a sentence

• The two countries had been waging war along the border for years.

• The charity is waging a long campaign against fuel poverty.

Where does waging come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'wage' arrived in English in the 1300s from Anglo-Norman and Old North French 'wagier', meaning 'to pledge' or 'to give security', a regional variant of Old French 'gagier' (which gave us 'gage' and 'engage'). Behind the French lay a Frankish, and ultimately Germanic, root '*wadi', meaning a pledge or stake, the same ancient word that surfaces in English 'wed' (where a marriage is literally a pledge). The original sense was about staking or pledging something, and from the idea of pledging oneself to a fight came the now-dominant military sense 'to carry on' a war or campaign. The noun 'wage', meaning payment for labour, grew from the same notion of something pledged in return for work. The spelling keeps the soft 'g' of the French root, and the participle drops the final 'e' before adding '-ing', which is the small mechanical step that trips writers up.

How the word is built

• wage (to carry on, pledge)
• -ing (present participle suffix)