Tipping

How to spell tipping

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tipping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tipping mean?

1. verbThe act of giving someone, such as a waiter or driver, a small sum of money for good service.
2. verbThe act of leaning, tilting, or overbalancing so as to fall or pour.

Tipping in a sentence

• In some countries tipping the waiter is considered rude rather than generous.

• The ladder was tipping alarmingly as he reached the top rung.

• The guidebook explained the local tipping customs for taxis and hotels.

• The toddler kept tipping the cup and spilling juice on the floor.

Where does tipping come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is the present participle of the verb 'tip', a short, plain word whose origins are surprisingly tangled. The older sense of 'tip', meaning to tilt, topple, or knock over, surfaced in English around the 1300s and is probably related to a Scandinavian or Low German source describing a light touch or a point; that same idea of a small touch also gives us the noun 'tip' for the pointed end of something. The much later sense, meaning to hand someone a small gift of money, appeared in the late 1600s and was at first slang, perhaps from the same notion of lightly passing something along, or from underworld cant where 'tip' meant to pass or give. The doubling of the final 'p' before '-ing' follows the regular English rule for a short stressed vowel followed by a single consonant, the same reason we write 'running' and 'stopping'. That doubled consonant is exactly where careful writers slip, since the bare word 'tip' shows only one. Both modern senses, the tilting one and the gratuity one, ride together in this single spelling.

How the word is built

• tip (root)
• -p- (doubled consonant before suffix)
• -ing (present participle suffix)