Bubbling

How to spell bubbling

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bubbling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bubbling mean?

1. verbProducing or rising in bubbles, as a liquid does when it boils or fizzes.
2. adjectiveFull of cheerful energy and enthusiasm.

Bubbling in a sentence

• verb

  The soup was bubbling gently on the back burner.

• adjective

  The new receptionist had a warm, bubbling personality.

• verb

  She heard the kettle bubbling before it switched off.

• adjective

  His bubbling enthusiasm made the whole meeting feel lighter.

Where does bubbling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the verb 'bubble', which appeared in Middle English around the 1300s as 'bobel' or 'bobble', almost certainly an imitative word that copied the soft popping sound a gas makes as it rises through liquid. Close relatives turn up across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch 'bobbel' and Low German 'bubbeln', all carrying the same echoic, sound-mimicking quality. The 'bubble' itself first meant a thin sphere of liquid filled with air, and from there the verb came to describe the lively, churning motion of boiling or fizzing fluids. The participle 'bubbling' simply adds the '-ing' ending, and because 'bubble' ends in a consonant plus silent 'e', the spelling keeps the double 'b' from the root while dropping that 'e' before '-ing'. By the 1500s the word had also stretched figuratively to describe people brimming with energy or feelings, a sense still common today.

How the word is built

• bubbl- (from bubble, to form bubbles)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)