Prepping

How to spell prepping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce prepping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prepping mean?

1. verbGetting something or oneself ready in advance for an event, task, or occasion.
2. verbStockpiling food, water, and supplies in readiness for a possible disaster or emergency.

Prepping in a sentence

• She spent the whole weekend prepping for the job interview.

• After the storm warnings, he started prepping by storing tinned food and bottled water.

• The chef is prepping the vegetables before the lunch rush.

• Online forums about prepping for a long power cut have grown popular.

Where does prepping come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from 'prep', a casual nineteenth-century clipping of 'prepare' and 'preparation'. Those longer words descend from the Latin praeparare, which combined prae meaning 'before' with parare meaning 'to make ready', so the literal idea was 'to make ready beforehand'. English took 'prepare' from this Latin source by way of Old French in the late Middle Ages, and 'prep' later emerged as a breezy shortened form in school and military slang. The verb form took the standard English pattern of doubling a single final consonant after a short stressed vowel before adding -ing, which is exactly why 'prep' becomes 'prepping' rather than 'preping'. That doubling rule, the same one behind 'stopping' and 'shopping', is the only real spelling trap in the word. More recently 'prepping' also attached itself to the survivalist movement, where a 'prepper' stockpiles supplies for emergencies.

How the word is built

• prep (clipped from prepare/preparation, from Latin praeparare)
• -p- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle/gerund)