Wedding
nounThe ceremony and celebration at which two people are married.
How to spell wedding
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce wedding
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does wedding mean?
- nounThe ceremony and celebration at which two people are married.
Wedding in a sentence
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They booked a country hotel for the wedding next summer.
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Her wedding dress had been altered three times before the big day.
Where does wedding come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word grows from the Old English verb weddian, meaning 'to pledge oneself' or 'to make a covenant', which is why a wedding was originally any solemn promise before it narrowed to the marriage ceremony. That verb came from the noun wedd, meaning a pledge or security, the very thing a person staked when making a binding vow. The same root survives in the ordinary verb 'to wed' and is distantly related to words for wagering and giving one's word. The marriage sense was already dominant by the late Old English and early Middle English period, as the formal exchange of vows became the pledge people thought of first. The doubled 'd' in the spelling simply reflects the short vowel before the -ing ending, the same pattern that gives us 'bedding' and 'nodding'.
How the word is built
- wed (Old English weddian: to pledge or marry)
- -ing (noun-forming suffix)
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