Word.ws English Dictionary

bigging

bigging is the present participle and gerund of big.

bigging is the alternative form of biggin.

Noun

bigging (plural biggings)

  1. (obsolete) A home.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland) A building, especially an outbuilding.
    • The back door, that behind the pulpit, led out across the kirkyard to the Manse and its biggings, set up in the time of the Old Queen […]1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 18

Meaning of big

Verb

big (third-person singular simple present bigs, present participle bigging, simple past and past participle bigged)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal, transitive) To inhabit; occupy.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal, reflexive) To locate oneself.
  3. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal, transitive) To build; erect; fashion.
    • Don't big it up.
  4. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, archaic, dialectal, intransitive) To dwell; have a dwelling.

See all 32 meanings of big

Meaning of biggin

Noun (1)

biggin (plural biggins)

  1. (archaic) A child's cap; (figuratively) childhood.
    • […] my brain has been topsy-turvy, they say, ever since the biggin was bound first round my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore it again.1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
  2. (historical) An official's hood or coif.

Noun (2)

biggin (plural biggins)

  1. A coffee pot with a strainer or perforated metallic vessel for holding the ground coffee, through which boiling water is poured.
    • As he became more popular, household objects were brought into requisition for his instruction in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the Yard ladies would fly out at their doors crying ‘Mr Baptist—tea-pot!’ ‘Mr Baptist—dust-pan!’ ‘Mr Baptist—flour-dredger!’ ‘Mr...1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC

Noun (3)

biggin (plural biggins)

  1. A drinking vessel for ale or beer; possibly a tankard.
    • Oswald's wife then put before him a large pie, and some wheaten bread, with a biggin of good beer.1847, Frederick Marryat, chapter 14, in The Children of the New Forest, England: H. Hurst

See all 8 meanings of biggin

Forms of bigging

pluralbiggings

Origin of bigging

From big + -ing.

Phrases with bigging

Questions about bigging

What does bigging mean?
Bigging means a home.
What is bigging the present participle and gerund of?
Bigging is the present participle and gerund of big.
What part of speech is bigging?
Bigging is a noun.
What is the plural of bigging?
The plural of bigging is biggings.

Words near bigging in the dictionary

  1. biggifies
  2. biggify
  3. biggifying
  4. biggin
  5. Biggin Hill
  6. bigging
  7. bigging up
  8. biggings
  9. biggins
  10. biggish
  11. biggishness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bigging (page history and authors); big (page history and authors); biggin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bigging.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bigging. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.