How to spell beginning

hear itbe·gin·ning/bɪ'ɡɪnɪŋ/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: The start or first part of something.

In a sentence: The story has a happy beginning.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double n. Often misspelled as begining or beggining.

Same family: began, begun, beginner, beginner-level, rebegin. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Beginning comes from the verb 'begin', which goes back to Old English 'beginnan', meaning 'to open, to set about, to start'. The double 'n' in 'beginning' appears because English often doubles a final consonant before adding '-ing' when the stress is on the last syllable, as in 'begin' → 'beginning'.

Patterns it uses: Double the consonant before a suffix?

Try spelling it

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