Commentating

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Giving a real-time spoken account and explanation of sports or other events as they happen
2. Verbally narrating and describing ongoing action during a performance or competition
3. Offering a continuous spoken report and interpretation of activities occurring live

Etymology: "Commentating" is the present participle of "commentate", a verb that was formed backwards from "commentator". The natural order would be the reverse: a speaker first commented, and someone who did it regularly became a commentator. But the verb came later. English speakers took the existing noun "commentator", treated its ending as if it were a verb-forming suffix, and produced "commentate" by subtraction, much as "edit" was made from "editor". The base word "comment" comes from the Latin "commentari", meaning to think over, reflect on, or write notes on, and the "-ate" ending is the familiar suffix that turns nouns and adjectives into verbs. Taken together, the sense of explaining events as they unfold grew naturally out of the older idea of offering remarks on a text or situation.