Stepping

How to spell stepping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stepping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stepping mean?

1. verbPresent participle of step: moving by lifting and setting down the foot, or going somewhere on foot.

Stepping in a sentence

• He was stepping onto the train just as the doors began to close.

• Stepping outside for a few minutes of fresh air cleared her head before the meeting.

Where does stepping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'step', which descends from the Old English steppan or stæppan, meaning 'to tread' or 'to go on foot'. The root traces back to a West Germanic source related to Dutch stappen and German stapfen, both carrying the sense of planting the foot firmly on the ground. Old English speakers also used the related noun stæpe for a single movement of the foot, the ancestor of our modern 'step'. The spelling trap appears only in the inflected forms: because 'step' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant after a stressed short vowel, that final p doubles before the -ing ending, giving 'stepping' rather than the wrong 'steping'. The very same doubling rule shapes relatives like 'stopping', 'shopping', and 'mapping', so remembering the family helps fix the second p.

How the word is built

• step (Old English steppan: to tread)
• doubled p
• -ing (present participle/gerund)