stopping

Pluralstoppings (some meanings)

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of stop.

   The train is stopping at every small village along the route.

   He kept stopping to catch his breath on the steep climb.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it builds the progressive (the bus is stopping) and follows verbs like keep. As a gerund it works as a noun but keeps its verb habits, so it can still take an object: stopping the leak took an hour. That object is the test. Once the object is gone and a plural becomes possible, you have the noun for a halt.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of coming to a halt; a pause or cessation of movement.

   The constant stopping and starting in city traffic wears out the brakes.

   A smooth stopping of the elevator requires careful, gradual braking.

   Similarhalting, halt, pausing, cessation

   Oppositestarting, start (entry)

   Note

   Most at home in a pair with its opposite: constant startings and stoppings. Unlike the gerund, this noun counts, so it takes a plural when the halts are many and separate. The pairing usually describes a jerky, interrupted rhythm, as in traffic or machinery. Either order works, though stopping and starting is the more common one in everyday speech.

3. 3
   noundatedcountable

   Material packed into a tooth to fill a cavity.

   The dentist packed a temporary stopping into the cavity before fitting the crown.

   Then one day a big stopping came out of one of my back teeth.

   1958, Henno Martin, The Sheltering Desert

   Similarfilling

   Note

   A dentist's word that has since given way to filling and now sounds dated. It once covered the whole range of materials: an amalgam stopping, or the gold stoppings Virginia Woolf imagines in the dust of a future London in Mrs. Dalloway (1925). It still appears in Edward Fitzgerald's 1958 translation of Henno Martin's The Sheltering Desert. In current speech say filling, and keep stopping for period voice.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A partition or door used to direct or block a current of air, especially in a mine.

   A brick stopping sealed off the abandoned section from the main airway.

   Inspectors checked each stopping for leaks before the shift began.

   Similarpartition, bulkhead, barrier, seal

   Note

   Mine ventilation depends as much on where air is kept out as on where it flows. Miners use one word for both kinds of barrier: a fixed partition that blocks a passage, and a door that can steer air along a chosen route. Like the dental filling, the term names the thing that does the stopping rather than the act itself.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A pad or poultice, often of dung or clay, packed onto a horse's hoof to keep it moist.

   The farrier packed a clay stopping into the hoof to keep it from cracking in the dry weather.

   Each morning the stable hand removed the old stopping and applied a fresh one.

   Similarpoultice, packing, pad

   Note

   This is a word from the farrier's trade, and it did not always have a good reputation. William Youatt, writing On the Structure and the Diseases of the Horse (1831–1850), warned that "the drawing poultices and stoppings of farriers are often highly injurious." It usually appears in the plural, alongside poultices, as one of the traditional hoof remedies.

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