Clipping

How to spell clipping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce clipping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does clipping mean?

1. nounA small piece cut or trimmed from something larger, such as an article cut from a newspaper or trimmings removed during cutting.
2. verbThe present participle of clip: in the act of cutting, trimming, or snipping something short.

Clipping in a sentence

• noun

  She kept a yellowed newspaper clipping about her grandfather in a drawer.

• verb

  The gardener was clipping the hedge into a neat square all afternoon.

• noun

  He swept the grass clipping off the path after mowing.

• verb

  She spent the morning clipping coupons from the weekend flyers.

Where does clipping come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base verb 'clip' came into English from the Old Norse verb klippa, which meant simply 'to cut' or 'to shear', a word the Vikings brought to northern England around the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It originally described cutting with shears or scissors, the kind of action used in trimming wool from sheep or hair from a head. Over time 'clip' broadened to mean cutting short or snipping off any small portion, and adding the suffix '-ing' produced 'clipping' to name the act of cutting and, by extension, the small piece that has been cut away. By the nineteenth century 'clipping' was the standard word for an article scissored out of a newspaper. The spelling trap lives in the doubled 'p': because 'clip' ends in a single vowel plus a single consonant, that consonant doubles before '-ing', giving 'clipping' rather than the wrong 'cliping'.

How the word is built

• clip (to cut)
• -p- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (forms noun/gerund)