Sorbing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Engaging in the action of soaking up or assimilating various materials, including chemical compounds or moisture
2. Describing the act of incorporating or integrating substances into a material, often seen in scientific contexts like chemistry or biology
3. Referring to the process of absorbing substances, such as gases or liquids, into a solid or liquid medium

Etymology: Sorbing is a surprisingly young word that was built backwards. English already had "absorb" and "adsorb", and speakers carved "sorb" out of them, so the verb is a back-formation, with the -ing ending added afterwards. The root itself is ancient. The Latin "sorbeō" meant "to suck up" or "to swallow", and the same stem gave Latin its word for the service tree, "sorbus", whose berries were eaten. That tree connection is the odd twist. The word "sorb" in its fruit sense came into English from Middle French "sorbe", which named the berry of the service tree, so one English word for a fruit and a verb about soaking things up share a Latin root. The two meanings grew from the same idea of drawing something in. The verb sense, meaning to take substances into a material, belongs to scientific writing, where chemists and biologists needed a short term for uptake. It is a modern technical use built on the older "absorb" family rather than an independent old word.

Synonyms: absorbing, taking in, soaking up, adsorbing, collecting