Withdrawing

How to spell withdrawing

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce withdrawing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does withdrawing mean?

1. verbTaking something or someone back or away, removing oneself, or pulling out of a situation or place.

Withdrawing in a sentence

• She has been withdrawing small amounts of cash from the same machine all week.

• The company is withdrawing its faulty product from every shop in the region.

Where does withdrawing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of 'withdraw', a verb assembled entirely from native English parts in the Middle English period, around the early 1200s. The first element 'with' did not originally mean 'accompanied by' as it usually does today; in Old English it carried the older sense of 'against', 'back', or 'away', a meaning that survives in words like 'withhold' and 'withstand'. The second element comes from the Old English verb 'dragan', meaning 'to pull, drag, or draw', the same root behind the everyday verb 'draw'. Put together, the literal idea is 'to draw back' or 'to pull away', which fits every modern use, whether pulling money out of an account, pulling oneself out of a contest, or pulling back emotionally. The spelling trap lives in the silent middle: the 'w' and the 'h' of 'with' sit quietly together before the 'd', so writers must remember that 'with' and 'draw' simply join with no letters dropped.

How the word is built

• with- (back, away)
• draw (to pull)
• -ing (present participle)