smoldering
verb, noun
smoldering is a verb meaning “present participle and gerund of smolder” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-M-O-L-D-E-R-I-N-G and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does smoldering mean?
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of smolder
noun
- 1
USUS standard spelling of smouldering.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce smoldering?
Smoldering has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of smoldering
- smolderings plural
- smouldering
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is smoldering?
Smoldering appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 39,336th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Smoldering in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense burning slowly without flame:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.