Watering

How to spell watering

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce watering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does watering mean?

1. verbThe act of pouring or sprinkling water onto plants, soil, or animals.
2. verbThe condition of the eyes filling with moisture, often from irritation, wind, or emotion.

Watering in a sentence

• The vegetable beds need watering every morning during the heatwave.

• The cold wind left her eyes watering as she walked to work.

• Regular watering keeps the hanging baskets from drying out.

• Chopping onions sets my eyes watering within seconds.

Where does watering come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word descends from the Old English wæter, the everyday term for the clear liquid that falls as rain and fills rivers and seas. It belongs to a large Germanic family, with close cousins in the Dutch water and the German Wasser, all tracing back to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic watar and ultimately to an ancient Indo-European root meaning simply 'water'. The verb 'to water', meaning to pour or sprinkle water onto something, grew naturally out of the noun in early English, and 'watering' is its present participle and gerund, formed with the ordinary -ing ending. Because the root has stayed so close to its original form for well over a thousand years, the spelling is refreshingly stable: a single t and a single r, with the only real point of care being that the e survives intact before the -ing.

How the word is built

• water (the liquid, from Old English wæter)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)