Stoppage

How to spell stoppage

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stoppage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stoppage mean?

1. nounAn instance of stopping or being stopped, such as a halt in work, play, or the flow of something.
2. nounAn amount withheld or deducted from wages, such as for tax or pension contributions.

Stoppage in a sentence

• The union called a one-hour work stoppage to protest the new shifts.

• After every stoppage for tax and insurance, her take-home pay was much lower.

• A stoppage in the water main left the whole street without supply.

• The payslip listed each stoppage in a separate column.

Where does stoppage come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the everyday verb 'stop' plus the noun-forming suffix '-age', which English absorbed from Old French and ultimately from the Latin '-aticum', a suffix that turned verbs and nouns into words meaning 'an action' or 'the result of an action'. The verb 'stop' itself descends from Old English 'stoppian', meaning to plug up or close an opening, which is why early uses leaned on the idea of blocking a hole or flow. By the time '-age' was attached, around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the formation produced a tidy noun for the act of stopping or the state of being stopped. The same productive '-age' pattern gives us familiar relatives like 'breakage', 'leakage', and 'blockage'. Because the suffix simply rides on the bare verb, the spelling keeps the doubled 'p' from 'stop' and then adds '-age', so the trap is remembering both the 'pp' and the silent 'e' at the end.

How the word is built

• stop (to halt, cease)
• -age (noun suffix denoting an action or its result)