Wearing

How to spell wearing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wearing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wearing mean?

1. verbHaving clothing, jewellery, or another item on the body.
2. adjectiveMentally or physically exhausting and tiring over time.

Wearing in a sentence

• verb

  She arrived at the office wearing a dark grey suit.

• adjective

  The long commute became wearing after several months.

• verb

  The cyclist was wearing a helmet and bright reflective gear.

• adjective

  Caring for a newborn is rewarding but deeply wearing.

Where does wearing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'wear', which descends from the Old English werian, meaning 'to clothe, to put on, or to cover the body'. That Anglo-Saxon root is related to similar words across the older Germanic languages, all carrying the basic idea of covering or dressing. Over the centuries the verb broadened from simply 'having clothes on' to include the slow rubbing away of a surface, as in shoes that 'wear' thin, and figuratively to the idea of tiring something or someone out. The spelling keeps the 'ear' cluster from the older form, which is the usual trap, since the sound does not obviously match the letters. By the time it became 'wearing' with the standard -ing ending, both the literal 'having on' sense and the figurative 'exhausting' sense were firmly established in English.

How the word is built

• wear (to have on the body, from Old English werian)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)