Stamp

How to spell stamp

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stamp

What does stamp mean?

1. nounA small printed adhesive label stuck on a letter or parcel to show that postage has been paid.
2. nounA tool that presses an image onto a surface, or the mark it leaves.
3. verbTo bring the foot down heavily and noisily on the ground.

Stamp in a sentence

• noun

  He licked the stamp and pressed it onto the envelope.

• noun

  The clerk pressed an official stamp onto the contract.

• verb

  The toddler began to stamp his feet in frustration.

• noun

  The letter was returned because the stamp had fallen off.

• noun

  Each passport page carried a faded stamp from a different border.

• verb

  She had to stamp in the cold just to keep her feet warm.

Where does stamp come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Stamp is a native English word that traces back to Old English stampian, meaning to pound, beat, or crush, and it sits among a wide family of related Germanic words such as Old Norse stappa and Dutch stampen, all carrying the idea of striking down hard with the foot. The very oldest sense was literally to bring the foot down forcefully, the way one might crush grapes or pound grain. From the notion of pressing something down with force came the later idea of pressing a carved tool against paper or wax to leave a mark, which is recorded from the late medieval period. The postal sense, a small printed label pressed onto a letter to show that postage has been paid, only arrived in the nineteenth century with the introduction of the modern postal system. The whole spread of meanings, from a furious foot to a tiny gummed square, still hangs together around that one original act of pressing down firmly.

How the word is built

• stamp (single Germanic root meaning to strike or press with the foot)