Welcoming

How to spell welcoming

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce welcoming

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does welcoming mean?

1. adjectiveFriendly and making people feel at ease or gladly received.
2. verbPresent participle of welcome: greeting someone with pleasure or accepting something gladly.

Welcoming in a sentence

• adjective

  The new office had a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

• verb

  The manager was welcoming a delegation of clients at the front entrance.

• adjective

  The staff were unusually welcoming to every guest who arrived.

• verb

  The committee is welcoming feedback from every department this month.

Where does welcoming come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the Old English wilcuma, which described a wished-for guest, someone whose arrival was desired; it joined wil, meaning 'will' or 'desire', with cuma, meaning 'comer' or 'one who arrives'. From the noun came the greeting and then the adjective sense of being pleasing or gladly received, and the spelling drifted toward 'wel-' partly under the influence of the ordinary word 'well', as if to suggest a person was 'well come'. The present participle 'welcoming' simply adds the -ing ending to the verb 'welcome' that developed from this same root. Closely related forms appear in other Germanic languages, such as the German willkommen, which preserves the original 'wil' element more visibly. The single l in 'welcome' is the spelling trap, since the link to 'well' tempts writers to double it; remember it descends from 'wil', not 'well'.

How the word is built

• wel- (from wil-: will, desire)
• come (from cuma: comer, guest)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)