Word.ws English Dictionary

stumping

stumping is the present participle and gerund of stump.

Meaning of stump

Verb

stump (third-person singular simple present stumps, present participle stumping, simple past and past participle stumped)

  1. (informal, transitive) To stop, confuse, or puzzle.
  2. (informal, intransitive) To baffle; to make unable to find an answer to a question or problem.
    • This last question has me stumped.
  3. (intransitive) To campaign.
    • He’s been stumping for that reform for months.
    Synonyms:
    campaign
  4. (US, colloquial, transitive) To travel over (a state, a district, etc.) giving speeches for electioneering purposes.
    • Freedom was in the air this spring, when millionaire philosopher Ivan Kramberger stumped the countryside on a platform of Slovenian independence and social welfare.1990 August, Kenneth C. Danforth, “Yugoslavia: A House Much Divided”, in National Geographic, volume 178, number 2, page 120
  5. (transitive) To get a batsman out stumped.
  6. (transitive) To bowl down the stumps of (a wicket).
    • A herd of boys with clamour bowled, / And stumped the wicket.1847, Alfred Tennyson, “Prologue”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC

See all 19 meanings of stump

Noun

stumping (plural stumpings)

  1. The act of somebody being stumped.
    • Wicket-keepers are measured by the number of catches and stumpings they make.2013, Julian Knight, Cricket For Dummies

Forms of stumping

pluralstumpings

Phrases with stumping

Questions about stumping

What does stumping mean?
Stumping means the act of somebody being stumped.
What is stumping the present participle and gerund of?
Stumping is the present participle and gerund of stump.
What part of speech is stumping?
Stumping is a noun.
What is the plural of stumping?
The plural of stumping is stumpings.

Words near stumping in the dictionary

  1. stumpifies
  2. stumpify
  3. stumpifying
  4. stumpily
  5. stumpiness
  6. stumping
  7. stumping it
  8. stumping out
  9. stumping up
  10. stumpings
  11. stumpish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stumping (page history and authors); stump (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-stumping.ogg.

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