Stopper

How to spell stopper

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stopper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stopper mean?

1. nounA plug or bung used to close the opening of a bottle, jar, or other container.

Stopper in a sentence

• The glass stopper on the decanter had become stuck.

• She pressed the rubber stopper firmly into the flask.

Where does stopper come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a homegrown English word built from the verb 'stop' plus the agent ending '-er', literally naming a thing that stops something. The verb 'stop' traces back to Old English 'stoppian', meaning to close up or plug an opening, which is thought to derive from a Late Latin word 'stuppare', 'to stuff with tow or flax', the coarse fibre used to seal gaps. From that sense of stuffing a hole, English developed the everyday meaning of bringing motion to a halt, and the noun 'stopper' settled into use from the 1400s onward for a plug that seals a bottle or jar. The familiar spelling trap is simply the doubled p, which appears because a single short vowel before the agent ending pulls in a second consonant, exactly as in 'shopper' and 'topper'. The old fibre-stuffing origin is a neat reminder that a stopper was always about jamming material into an opening.

How the word is built

• stop (to halt or block)
• -per (agent suffix; the p doubles after a short stressed vowel)