Other forms: rewarded, rewards, rewarding
A reward is something good given for something well done. A reward for finding the dog, reward good behaviour, a reward of five hundred pounds.
In animal training and child-raising, rewarding is the technical practice: give the reward immediately, or the animal will not connect it with the behaviour. That timing is the whole method. There is also the reward offered for information, which is a fixed phrase in police appeals. Note rewarding as an adjective, which means satisfying rather than paid — a rewarding job is often a badly paid one, and everybody knows it.
1verbrewardTo give somebody something good for what they have done.
“Reward it straight away or the dog will not connect the two.”
synonyms: repay, recompense
2noungivenSomething given in return for good behaviour or a service.
“There is a reward for information and nobody has claimed it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
reward is something given in return.
Old French reward is the Norman form of the word that also gave English regard — the same word, one with a w and one with a g. To reward somebody was to look on them favourably before it was to pay them.
Proto-Indo-European
*wer-
Old French
reward — reward
Middle English
reward
English, today
reward
Built from
From Middle English reward, rewarde, from Old French reward (“reward”) (compare Old French regard, whence modern French regard, and also English regard through Middle French), from rewarder (“to reward”) (compare Old French reguarder), from re- + warder (“to guard, keep”) (compare Old French guarder); the Anglo-Norman forms are derived from fro-nor - variants of Old French, ultimately of gem - (Frankish -) origin. Compare regard, warden, guard. See more below. Mostly displaced mēd, whence Modern English meed. Displaced lēan and edlēan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA