Word.ws English Dictionary

keming

/ˈkɛmɪŋ/

keming noun: improper kerning.

Noun

keming (uncountable)

  1. (Internet, humorous) Improper kerning.
    • When done correctly, kerning helps to improve the readability of text by adding or removing space between two letters. Bad kerning, also known as keming, leads to misreadings, and in the worst cases, incredibly bad (but humorous) misunderstandings.2018 April 20, jkohorst, “FR E SH A VOCA DO^([sic])”, in Writing for Designers^([dead link])

Origin of keming

Coined by various sources in the early 1990s as a deliberate misspelling of kerning by combining the r and n into an m, as an example of improper kerning due to the increasing growth of desktop publishing.

Questions about keming

What does keming mean?
Keming means improper kerning.
What part of speech is keming?
Keming is a noun.
How do you pronounce keming?
Keming is pronounced /ˈkɛmɪŋ/.

Words near keming in the dictionary

  1. Kemetist
  2. Kemi
  3. Kemi Sami
  4. Kemijärvi
  5. Keminaissance
  6. keming
  7. Keminmaa
  8. kemiri
  9. Kemite
  10. Kemites
  11. Kemmer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keming (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-NaomiAmethyst-keming.wav.

Cite this entry: “keming.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keming. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.