Dribble

How to spell dribble

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dribble

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dribble mean?

1. verbTo let liquid fall or flow slowly in drops or a thin stream.
2. verbTo move a ball forward with small repeated touches or bounces, as in football or basketball.
3. nounA thin trickle of liquid, or a very small quantity of something.

Dribble in a sentence

• verb

  The baby tends to dribble when its teeth are coming through.

• verb

  He can dribble the ball past three defenders with ease.

• noun

  Only a dribble of milk was left in the carton this morning.

• verb

  Water began to dribble from the cracked pipe under the sink.

• verb

  Young players spend hours learning to dribble with both feet.

• noun

  A thin dribble of sauce ran down the side of the plate.

Where does dribble come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Dribble is a frequentative form of the older verb 'drib', which was itself a variant of 'drip' and 'drop', all part of a family of native English words for liquid falling in tiny amounts. The base ultimately traces to Germanic roots imitating the sound and motion of water descending bit by bit. The '-le' ending is the same frequentative suffix seen in words like 'sparkle' and 'crackle', signalling something done over and over in small repeated bursts, so a dribble is essentially a series of little dribs. It appeared in English around the late 1500s, first describing saliva or liquid trickling out, and only much later, in the world of sport, did it come to mean nudging a ball along in small repeated touches. The doubled 'b' is the spelling trap: it follows the regular English pattern of doubling a single consonant after a short stressed vowel before '-le'.

How the word is built

• drib (a variant of drip/drop)
• -le (frequentative suffix indicating repeated small action)