Skipping

How to spell skipping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce skipping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skipping mean?

1. verbMoving along with light springing steps, or passing quickly over something by leaving it out.
2. nounThe activity of jumping repeatedly over a rope swung under the feet, done as a game or for fitness.

Skipping in a sentence

• verb

  The children came skipping down the corridor after the bell rang.

• noun

  Skipping is a cheap and effective way to improve cardiovascular fitness.

• verb

  He kept skipping the boring chapters and went straight to the summary.

• noun

  The boxer added ten minutes of skipping to his daily warm-up.

Where does skipping come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base verb 'skip' first appears in Middle English around the 1300s as 'skippen', meaning to spring or leap lightly, and it is generally traced to a Scandinavian source closely related to the Old Norse 'skopa', meaning to run or to take a leap. The sense of bounding along with quick, light steps soon broadened to include passing quickly over something, which is how we get the modern 'skip a page' or 'skip a meal'. The doubled 'p' in 'skipping' follows a regular English spelling rule: when a short, stressed vowel ends a single-syllable word in a single consonant, that consonant doubles before a vowel suffix, which is the very feature writers occasionally forget. The same family gave us the noun for the children's rope game and, in British English, 'skip' as the large open container, both anchored in that idea of light, springing or scooping movement. Because the root entered English from the Norse-speaking settlers of the north and east, it sits alongside many other brisk, everyday action words of that origin.

How the word is built

• skip (to move with light bounds)
• -p- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)