Wiping

How to spell wiping

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wiping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wiping mean?

1. verbCleaning or drying a surface by rubbing it with a cloth, hand, or similar.

Wiping in a sentence

• She spent the morning wiping down the kitchen counters.

• He kept wiping the rain off his glasses on the walk home.

Where does wiping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base verb 'wipe' comes from the Old English wīpian, meaning to clean or rub a surface, which traces back to a Germanic root linked to ideas of sweeping or twisting motion. The same family of words gave German wischen, also meaning to wipe, showing the shared Germanic ancestry. In English the verb has kept its core practical meaning of removing dirt, moisture, or marks by drawing a cloth or hand across a surface for well over a thousand years. The form 'wiping' is simply the present participle, created by dropping the silent final 'e' of 'wipe' and adding the regular '-ing' ending, which is why the long 'i' sound is preserved with a single 'p' rather than a doubled one. The single 'p' is the very point that trips writers up, since many verbs (like 'sip' to 'sipping') double the consonant; 'wipe' does not, because the silent 'e' already signals the long vowel.

How the word is built

• wipe (Old English wīpian, to clean by rubbing)
• -ing (present participle/gerund suffix); the silent 'e' is dropped before adding -ing