What ING does to a word
ING is the most common ending in English. It turns a verb into a participle or gerund (play becomes playing), and it also appears inside plenty of everyday nouns that were never verbs at all, such as king, ring, thing and spring. Our dictionary has 12,564 words ending in it, so any rack holding I, N and G has a ready-made ending.
This page looks at ING from four angles: how long the words are, how the spelling changes when ING is added, which ones score best, and how to use the ending as a Scrabble tool. The counts come straight from the dictionary, not from a general claim about English.
How long ING words are
Most ING words are between seven and ten letters, which is what you would expect for a three-letter ending added to a stem of four to seven letters. The very short ones are the most useful for tight spaces on the board, and the long ones matter for bingos.
| Length | Words | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 4 letters | 9 | 0.1% |
| 5 letters | 34 | 0.3% |
| 6 letters | 381 | 3.0% |
| 7 letters | 1,529 | 12.2% |
| 8 letters | 2,014 | 16.0% |
| 9 letters | 2,294 | 18.3% |
| 10 letters | 2,273 | 18.1% |
| 11 letters | 1,755 | 14.0% |
| 12 letters | 1,081 | 8.6% |
The longest, at 21 letters, is OVERINTELLECTUALIZING. You will rarely play one, but they show how many syllables an ING ending can carry.
Spelling rules when you add ING
Of the 12,555 ING words that are at least five letters long, we checked how each one relates to a base word in the dictionary. This is the breakdown, and each rule is worth knowing because it tells you which stems can take ING.
| Rule | Words | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Add ING to the base word | 6,563 | AGING, AWING, AXING, BEING, BOING and DOING |
| Drop a final E, then add ING | 4,383 | ACING, APING, CUING, DYING, EKING and EYING |
| Double the last consonant | 998 | UPPING, BAGGING, BAMMING, BANNING, BEDDING and BEGGING |
| Change IE to YING | 11 | HYING, VYING, BELYING, RETYING, UNTYING and HOGTYING |
| No matching base verb | 600 | BRING, CLING, FLING, SLING, STING and SWING |
The first rule covers most words. The second and third are where players slip: MAKING needs the E dropped, and RUNNING needs the N doubled. The last group contains nouns and words whose base is not in the dictionary, such as BRING, CLING, FLING, KING and LING.
Highest-scoring words ending in ING
| Word | Scrabble points | WWF points |
|---|---|---|
| HYPOPHYSECTOMIZING | 48 | 50 |
| ANTHROPOMORPHIZING | 40 | 44 |
| OVERCOMMERCIALIZING | 40 | 48 |
| PHOTOSYNTHESIZING | 38 | 39 |
| PSYCHOANALYZING | 38 | 41 |
| SUBJECTIVIZING | 38 | 46 |
| HYPERIMMUNIZING | 37 | 42 |
| PHOTOOXIDIZING | 37 | 39 |
| VENTRILOQUIZING | 37 | 43 |
| CHROMOLITHOGRAPHING | 36 | 40 |
| COMPARTMENTALIZING | 36 | 44 |
| MISCHARACTERIZING | 36 | 40 |
| OVERINTELLECTUALIZING | 36 | 45 |
| QUIZZING | 36 | 39 |
| RECONTEXTUALIZING | 36 | 42 |
Short ING words in full
These are all 43 words of five letters or fewer that end in ING. They fit into small gaps on the board and are the ones to learn first.
acing aging aping awing axing being boing bring cling cuing ding doing dying eking eying fling going hying icing iring king ling lying ohing oping owing piing ping ring ruing sing sling sting suing swing thing ting tying using vying wing wring zing
Using ING in Scrabble
- Treat ING as a three-tile stem. With I, N and G on the rack, only four tiles are left to find a word, which is a much smaller search than seven. The Scrabble Word Finder with Ends with set to ING does exactly this.
- Keep the G in mind. G is worth two points in Scrabble but three in Words With Friends, so an ING word scores a point more in WWF. See the Words With Friends Solver for the full value table.
- Look at the board. A verb already on the board can often be extended with ING if there are three empty squares after it, which scores for both words.
- Do not rely on it. ING bingos are famous, but they are also the first place opponents look. Keep other options open.
For the full picture of how endings work, see the words ending in hub and the 6 letter words and 7 letter words pages, where ING words are a large share of the list. There are 381 six-letter words that end in ING alone.