Waiting

How to spell waiting

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce waiting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does waiting mean?

1. verbStaying in one place or delaying action until an expected event happens.
2. nounThe act or period of staying until something happens.

Waiting in a sentence

• verb

  She has been waiting at the station for the delayed train.

• noun

  The long waiting before the results made everyone anxious.

• verb

  The customers were waiting patiently for the shop to open.

• noun

  Hours of waiting in the clinic tested her patience.

Where does waiting come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows from the verb 'wait', which English took from Old North French 'waitier', meaning 'to watch' or 'to lie in wait'. That Norman French verb itself came from a Frankish Germanic root, '*wahtōn', meaning 'to watch over' or 'to guard', and it is a close cousin of our native words 'watch' and 'wake'. When the word arrived in English in the 1200s it carried strong overtones of keeping a lookout or ambushing, which is why an old soldier might 'lie in wait'. Over the following centuries the meaning softened from active watching to the more passive sense of staying somewhere in expectation of an event. The '-ing' ending then turns the verb into the ongoing action or the gerund, and the spelling trap to remember is the 'ai' vowel pair plus the single 't', since the word is not doubled.

How the word is built

• wait (to stay in expectation)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)