cupping
Pluralcuppings (some meanings)
Pluralcuppings (some meanings)
- 1A traditional therapy in which heated glass cups are applied to the skin, supposedly to draw blood toward the surface.
She booked a session of cupping to relieve the tension in her shoulders.
Practitioners warm the air inside each glass before pressing it down during cupping.
Note
Heat supplies the vacuum in this practice. The air inside each glass is warmed, and as it cools and contracts on the skin, it pulls the flesh upward. Its fuller name is fire cupping, and the vessels are called cupping glasses. Unlike the old bloodletting operation, this sense is current. Careful writers keep the hedge: the cups are supposed to draw blood toward the surface.
- 2The act of forming something into a curved, cup-like shape.
Careful cupping of the clay gave the dish its rounded base.
The gentle cupping of the leaf channeled rainwater toward its stem.
- 3The taking of a small amount of a drink such as tea or coffee into the mouth to taste it; also, a session where tasting is done.
The roaster held a cupping each morning to check the day's batches.
Through careful cupping, she detected a hint of citrus in the brew.
Similartasting
- 4Present participle of cup.
The nurse was cupping water in her hands to wash the wound.
Cupping her ear, she leaned closer to catch the whisper.
Note
This form does double duty. In "she was cupping her hands" it is a participle after be, while in "cupping the hands helps" it is a gerund heading a noun phrase. Every sense of cup behind it is transitive, so it nearly always takes an object, such as hands, an ear, or water. One archaic use, to cup a patient, is the verb behind the old bloodletting operation.
Less common meanings
- 5A medical procedure that creates a partial vacuum over a spot on the skin to draw blood to the surface or out of the body.
The physician prescribed cupping to relieve the congestion in his chest.
Old ledgers record cupping among the remedies offered by the town barber.
Note
The word goes back to Middle English, built from cup plus -ing after the vessel that did the work. Practitioners distinguished dry cupping, done over intact skin, from wet cupping, where the skin was first scarified so that blood could escape. The term is archaic in this sense and suits historical writing about physicians and barbers. For the treatment still offered today, the fire-cupping therapy is the sense to use.
- 6A suction operation for drawing pus from an abscess by forming a partial vacuum over the affected spot.
The barber-surgeon turned to cupping when the abscess refused to drain on its own.
She underwent cupping over the inflamed swelling to relieve the pressure.
Note
Here the suction serves drainage rather than bleeding. The same vacuum that the bloodletting operation relied on is turned on an abscess to draw out pus. It shares that sense's archaic register, so it belongs in accounts of barber-surgeons and older remedies rather than in present-day clinical description.
Showing meanings only.
cupping is a form of cup
cup, verb: To curve the hands into the hollow shape of a cup, or to hold something in hands curved this way. Full entry
- Spelling
- cup → cupping: double the p, add -ing
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of cupping apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origins
From Middle English cupping, equivalent to cup combined with the suffix -ing.
Formed from cup combined with the suffix -ing.