Stripping

How to spell stripping

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stripping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stripping mean?

1. verbRemoving an outer covering, layer, or coating from a surface.
2. verbTaking off one's clothes, often as a performance.

Stripping in a sentence

• Stripping the old paint from the door took the whole weekend.

• The swimmers were stripping down to their costumes by the poolside.

• She spent the afternoon stripping wallpaper from the hallway.

• The actor was nervous about stripping for the medical scene.

Where does stripping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle and gerund of the verb 'strip', which comes from the Old English 'bestrypan', meaning to plunder or to despoil, and is rooted in the Germanic family of words for laying bare. The core idea has always been removal: pulling away whatever covers, clothes, or protects something. Over the centuries the word broadened from looting and plundering to the gentler everyday senses of peeling off paint, wallpaper, bark, or clothing. The spelling trap lives in the suffix: because 'strip' ends in a single consonant after a single short stressed vowel, that final p doubles before -ing, giving 'stripping' rather than 'striping'. That doubling matters, since 'striping' (one p) means marking with stripes, a completely different action.

How the word is built

• strip (to remove a covering or layer)
• -p- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -ing (present participle / gerund)