Pumping

How to spell pumping

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pumping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pumping mean?

1. verbForcing a liquid or gas to move using a pump or a similar repeated pushing action.

Pumping in a sentence

• The crew spent the night pumping water out of the flooded basement.

• She was pumping air into the flat tyre before the long drive.

Where does pumping come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The word descends from the noun and verb 'pump', which most likely came into English in the 1400s from Middle Dutch 'pompe' or the related Low German 'pumpe', words for a pipe or water conduit. The term seems to have spread first among sailors, since shipboard pumps were essential for clearing water from the hold, and Dutch maritime vocabulary heavily influenced English seafaring speech of the period. Some scholars also suspect an imitative origin, with the word echoing the dull thumping sound a pump makes in use. From the literal sense of drawing or forcing water, 'pump' broadened to cover moving any fluid or gas, and the present participle 'pumping' simply adds the regular -ing ending without any change to the root, which keeps its spelling pleasingly straightforward. The single 'p' before -ing rather than a doubled consonant follows the normal rule, since the base word already ends in a consonant cluster.

How the word is built

• pump (root: to force liquid or gas)
• -ing (present participle suffix)