Dropping

How to spell dropping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dropping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dropping mean?

1. verbLetting something fall, or causing something to descend or decrease, as the continuous form of the verb 'drop'.

Dropping in a sentence

• She was dropping the children at school before her shift began.

• The courier kept dropping the heavy parcels on the doorstep.

Where does dropping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is simply the present participle of the verb 'drop', which traces back to the Old English noun 'dropa', meaning a small globule of liquid such as a falling bead of water. From that noun grew the verb 'droppian', literally 'to fall in drops', and over the centuries the sense broadened from liquids to any object or amount that falls or is let fall. The word belongs to the same Germanic family as Dutch 'drop' and German 'Tropfen', all sharing the idea of a tiny falling portion. The spelling trap in 'dropping' is the doubled 'p': because 'drop' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant in a stressed syllable, English doubles that consonant before adding '-ing', a rule that also produces 'stopping', 'shopping' and 'hopping'. Forgetting that doubling and writing 'droping' is the most common slip.

How the word is built

• drop (Old English dropa: a small falling amount)
• -p- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)