Words Ending in ING

The ING Ending — Over 13,000 Words and Counting

No suffix works harder in English than -ING. It turns verbs into present participles (RUNNING, THINKING), creates gerunds that function as nouns (SWIMMING is fun, READING is relaxing), and appears in root words where it's not a suffix at all — KING, RING, STRING, THING. That last category matters a lot for crossword solvers. When you see a short slot ending in ING in a crossword grid, don't automatically assume it's a verb form. Four-letter root words like KING, RING, SING, DING, PING, and ZING are some of the most frequently used entries in crossword construction because they cross easily with common letters.

A fact that changes how you think about ING: in Middle English, the -ING ending was actually pronounced with a hard G — something like "running-guh." The modern pronunciation where the G is essentially silent developed gradually over centuries, and some English dialects (particularly in the English Midlands) still pronounce it closer to the original. Another useful observation: ING is one of the most common three-letter combinations in English text, appearing more frequently than THE in many word frequency analyses when you count all its occurrences across different words.

For Scrabble players, holding I, N, and G together on your rack is a strong position. You can extend almost any verb already on the board — turning PLAY into PLAYING or WORK into WORKING — and if that extension reaches a triple word square, you've turned a modest board word into a 40+ point play. The trick is not holding those tiles too long if nothing opens up; after two turns, dump them and draw fresh. ING words share massive overlap with words ending in TION, since the same verbs often accept both suffixes (ACT produces both ACTING and ACTION). Explore words starting with A and words starting with E for hundreds of ING forms. For something completely different, words ending in Z offers a contrast in rarity.

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