Worsening

How to spell worsening

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce worsening

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does worsening mean?

1. verbBecoming or making something progressively worse in quality, condition, or severity.
2. adjectiveDescribing a situation or condition that is growing increasingly bad.

Worsening in a sentence

• verb

  The patient's breathing kept worsening through the night.

• adjective

  Worsening weather forced the airline to cancel the afternoon flights.

• verb

  The company's finances were steadily worsening despite the cuts.

• adjective

  The report warned of worsening traffic across the city centre.

Where does worsening come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word traces back to 'worse', which comes from the Old English 'wiersa' or 'wyrsa', the comparative form meaning 'more bad', itself rooted in a Proto-Germanic stem that also gave German 'wirsen'. English speakers later added the suffix '-en', a productive ending used to turn an adjective into a verb meaning 'to make or become', much as 'sharp' yields 'sharpen' and 'wide' yields 'widen'; this produced the verb 'worsen' around the early 1400s. Adding the present-participle ending '-ing' gives 'worsening', describing something that is steadily becoming worse. A useful spelling note is that the base keeps a single 's' from 'worse', and the '-en' is preserved intact before '-ing', so the word is built straightforwardly as worse + en + ing rather than doubling any letters. The whole family belongs to the small group of irregular comparatives, since 'bad' has no regular comparative and borrows 'worse' from an entirely separate root.

How the word is built

• wors- (from worse, the comparative of bad)
• -en (verb-forming suffix: to make or become)
• -ing (present participle / gerund)