Stopping

How to spell stopping

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stopping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stopping mean?

1. verbComing to a halt, or bringing an action, movement, or process to an end.

Stopping in a sentence

• The train kept stopping at every small village along the route.

• She is stopping work an hour early to collect the children.

Where does stopping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is simply the present participle and gerund of the verb 'stop', which descends from the Old English stoppian, meaning 'to plug up' or 'to close an opening'. That early sense came from a Germanic borrowing of the Late Latin stuppare, 'to stuff with tow or oakum', the coarse fibre once jammed into gaps to seal them. Over the centuries the idea of blocking a hole broadened into the modern meanings of halting motion or bringing an activity to an end. The spelling trap lives entirely in the ending: because 'stop' is a single short stressed syllable ending in one vowel and one consonant, the final p doubles before -ing, giving 'stopping' rather than the wrong 'stoping'. The same doubling rule shapes its relatives 'hopping', 'shopping' and 'dropping'.

How the word is built

• stop (root verb)
• doubled p
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)