Scrapping

How to spell scrapping

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scrapping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scrapping mean?

1. verbGetting rid of something no longer wanted, or abandoning a plan or scheme.
2. verbFighting or quarrelling in a rough, informal way.

Scrapping in a sentence

• The council is scrapping the old recycling scheme next month.

• The two dogs were scrapping over a bone in the back yard.

• They are scrapping the rusty old van and selling it for metal.

• The brothers spent the whole afternoon scrapping on the lawn.

Where does scrapping come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the present participle of the verb 'scrap', which itself grew out of the noun 'scrap', meaning a small fragment or leftover piece. That noun came into English in the late medieval period from the Old Norse 'skrap', meaning scraps, trifles, or odds and ends, and it is closely related to 'skrapa', 'to scrape'. By the early 1800s 'scrap' had developed into a verb meaning to break something down into discarded fragments, and from there to abandon or get rid of a plan or thing entirely. A separate but possibly related slang sense, 'to scrap' meaning to fight or brawl, appeared in the nineteenth century, perhaps from the same family or from the idea of a noisy scrape. The key spelling point is that 'scrap' ends in a single short vowel plus consonant, so the consonant doubles before the ending, giving 'scrapping' with two p's; the single-p 'scraping' belongs to the quite different verb 'scrape'.

How the word is built

• scrap (fragment, leftover bit)
• -p- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -ing (present participle)