grilling

The word 'grilling' is built upon the culinary verb 'grill', which entered English from Old French. The French term referred to a gridiron or grating, a device for cooking over coals, and is likely derived from the Latin 'craticula', a diminutive of 'cratis' meaning a wickerwork or hurdle. The '-ing' suffix is a native English grammatical element used to form nouns from verbs, denoting the action or process. Thus, the literal combination meaning "the action of cooking on a gridiron" evolved metaphorically in the 19th century to describe a similarly intense and direct form of interrogation, as if the subject were being subjected to figurative heat.

Structure: grill (to broil) + ing (noun suffix) grill (from Old French graille, a grating or gridiron, of uncertain origin, possibly from Latin craticula, a small gridiron) + ing (from Old English -ing, -ung, a suffix forming verbal nouns indicating an action or its result).