stamping

Pluralstampings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of stamp.

   Stamping his feet in fury, he marched out of the meeting.

   The clerk spent all morning stamping passports at the border.

   Note

   One -ing form serves two families of meaning. The first is heavy-footed: stamping about, stamping his feet. The second is about marking: stamping passports, stamping an envelope. Only the transitive uses take an object. Once the word takes a plural, as in stampings, it is no longer a verb form. It has become the noun for the sound or one of the manufacturing nouns.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The forceful act of bringing a foot down hard, or the noise that the movement produces.

   His furious stamping echoed through the empty corridor.

   The dancers' rhythmic stampings shook the old wooden floor.

   Similarstomping, thumping, pounding, tramping

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A manufacturing method that forms parts by pressing material between dies under extreme pressure.

   Stamping produces thousands of identical parts in a single shift.

   The plant switched from casting to stamping for the steel brackets.

   Similarpressing

   Note

   Here the word names the process as a whole and takes no article: a plant does stamping, as it might do casting. The same word becomes countable when it names the finished part, as in a stamping or a crate of stampings. So stamping on its own is the method, and a stamping is what the method produced. Blanking, piercing, bending and coining are all stamping operations.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A component produced by shaping material with dies under extreme pressure.

   Each stamping is inspected for hairline cracks before it reaches the welding line.

   The crate held hundreds of metal stampings ready for assembly.

   Similarpressing

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