Stamping

How to spell stamping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stamping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stamping mean?

1. verbBringing the foot down forcefully, or pressing a mark, design, or seal onto a surface.

Stamping in a sentence

• The toddler kept stamping his feet until he was given the toy.

• The clerk spent the morning stamping each passport at the border.

Where does stamping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word stamp descends from a Germanic root meaning to pound, crush, or bring the foot down heavily, related to Old English stempan and to similar verbs in Old Norse and Old High German. Its earliest English sense was physical: to thrust the foot forcefully against the ground, often in anger or to flatten something. From this idea of pressing down hard came the later sense of impressing a design onto wax, metal, or paper, which is why a tool that leaves a mark and the small adhesive label on a letter both took the name stamp. The present participle stamping simply adds the regular -ing suffix, and because the base ends in a single consonant after a short vowel, that final p is not doubled. The spelling stays transparent, which is why stamping looks exactly like stamp with -ing tacked on.

How the word is built

• stamp (Germanic root: to bring the foot down, or to press a mark)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)