Topping

How to spell topping

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce topping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does topping mean?

1. nounA layer of food placed on top of a dish to add flavour or decoration.
2. verbPresent participle of 'top': adding something to the highest part, or reaching the highest level.

Topping in a sentence

• noun

  The children argued over which pizza topping to order.

• verb

  The baker was topping the cake with fresh strawberries.

• noun

  She sprinkled a crumble topping over the baked apples.

• verb

  The album spent three weeks topping the sales charts.

Where does topping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the noun and verb 'top', which comes from the Old English topp, meaning the summit, crest, or tuft at the highest point of something. The same Germanic root gave related words across the North Sea languages, and it originally described things like the top of the head or the tuft on a plant. When 'top' became a verb meaning 'to put something on the highest part', the gerund and noun 'topping' followed naturally, recording the layer placed on top. The familiar food sense, the cheese or sauce spread over a dish, became common in cookery from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The spelling doubles the 'p' for a regular English reason: a short stressed vowel before a single final consonant makes that consonant double when '-ing' is added, so 'top' becomes 'topping', just as 'shop' becomes 'shopping'.

How the word is built

• top (from Old English topp: summit, highest part)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)