pooping

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of poop.

   Parents of newborns quickly learn to keep track of how often the baby is pooping.

   Steep following seas kept pooping the little sloop, filling the cockpit with water.

   Note

   The bodily meanings are colloquial, at home in talk about babies and pets rather than in formal writing. Two other verbs share the spelling: with out it means tiring (we were pooping out by noon), and at sea a wave pooping a boat is breaking over its stern, the action behind the sailor's noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   In sailing, the striking of a vessel's stern, or poop, by a wave or by another vessel.

   Running before the gale, the crew feared pooping more than anything else.

   The yacht's low, open stern made her prone to pooping in a heavy following sea.

   Note

   A hazard of running downwind: a following sea, moving faster than the boat, overtakes it and breaks over the stern, flooding the cockpit or deck. That is why crews running before a storm watch the waves behind them as closely as the course ahead. The word comes from poop, the stern itself, not from the nursery verb, and a boat that suffers it is said to be pooped.

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