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The "bating" in "combating" is pronounced the exact same way as "batting". It doesn't make sense to me.

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    Combatting is spelled with two t's in British English.
    – Charl E
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 5:20
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    Bating (with a bat) would need to be disambiguated from bating (to set a trap), but with com in front of it, it needs nothing more.
    – Jim
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 5:41
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    @Jim - I never heard of bating a trap (baiting, yes), but I'm no hunter.
    – anongoodnurse
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 6:16
  • Have you seen English Language Learners? It's a great site for basic questions about the English language.
    – anongoodnurse
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 6:17
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    Possible duplicate of Why do you write "occurred" but "listened"?
    – herisson
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 10:30

3 Answers 3

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Generally, if the base ends in a single consonant represented by a single consonant letter, the letter is doubled before suffixes beginning with a vowel, subject though to the base being stressed on its final syllable. Monosyllabic bases do of course have the stress on the final syllable and hence always satisfy that requirement: "fat"/"fatt.er"/"fatt.est" ; "bat"/ "batt.ed"/"batt.ing"and so on.

But the verb "combat" can be stressed on either syllable so the suffixed forms are spelled with or without doubling: "combated"/"combatted"; "combating"/"combatting".

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Normally consonant doubling (CD) occurs after short stressed vowels, and after long stressed vowels + r (-ar/er/or/ur) as in to prefer, preferred, to star/starring, but to stare/staring.

CD with unstressed syllables is a kind of grey area. It occurs regularly after -el as in to travel, BrE travelling, AmE traveling, and after -al as in to signal, BrE signalling, AmE signaling.

Sometimes it occurs after p as in to kidnap/kidnapping, to worship/worshipping, but not in to develop/developing.

Unstressed syllables ending with -t normally have no CD. But to combat is a special case. Pons has to combat and combatting/combating. Perhaps the CD is occasional in analogy to to bat/batting. Oald, Collins, McMillan don't mention CD.

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    The verb "to combat" may be pronounced with stress on the second syllable. I assume that is why some dictionaries list the forms with consonant doubling. The vowels "ar/er/or/ur" are only long vowels phonetically; in the writing system, they are treated as short vowels followed by a consonant. With "kidnapping" and "worshipping," I'm not sure if the "p" is as relevant as the secondary stress. "Programming" also has consonant doubling and secondary stress on the last syllable. But from this point of view, it is odd that "combat" doesn't have doubling.
    – herisson
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 10:31
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    Maybe people for some reason perceive "kidnap" and "worship" as compound words. There are derivatives of "kidnap" like "dognap." In English compounds, it seems like we often have CD even when the last syllable doesn't have the primary stress (e.g. "bullshitting").
    – herisson
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 10:49
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I believe that the English UK spelling should be combatting in all cases, according to spelling rules, as someone pointed out above. This word is no "exception to the rule": the confusion stems simply from erroneous MS Word spellcheck, which for this word has US settings even when you are writing in English (United Kingdom)...

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    Your answer would benefit from a sourced referrence being edited into it.
    – Jiminy Cricket.
    Commented Apr 28, 2020 at 9:30
  • The trouble is that if different spelling variants are available, people are free to choose which variant they prefer no matter where they live. Admittedly it is more reasonable to subscribe to local mores, but this is not a rule.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Nov 9, 2021 at 17:00

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