Stomping

How to spell stomping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stomping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stomping mean?

1. verbTreading or bringing the feet down heavily and noisily, often in anger or to dance vigorously.

Stomping in a sentence

• The toddler kept stomping around the kitchen until he got his way.

• She could hear the upstairs neighbour stomping across the floorboards at midnight.

Where does stomping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'stomp', which began life in the United States in the early 1800s as a regional, emphatic variant of the much older verb 'stamp'. 'Stamp' itself goes back to Old English 'stempan', a word of Germanic origin meaning to pound, crush, or bring the foot down with force; the same family gave German 'stampfen' and Dutch 'stampen', all carrying that sense of a heavy downward thud. Over time 'stamp' branched into several meanings, from pressing a mark onto paper to treading firmly, and the dialect form 'stomp' kept the foot-pounding sense alive with extra punch. The spelling is mercifully regular: one 'p' before the '-ing', because a single short vowel ending in a single consonant simply takes the suffix without doubling once the cluster 'mp' is involved. The word is now common worldwide, but its informal, foot-thumping flavour still reflects its American origins.

How the word is built

• stomp (root: to bring the foot down heavily)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)