Word.ws English Dictionary

toppling

toppling is the present participle and gerund of topple.

Meaning of topple

Verb

topple (third-person singular simple present topples, present participle toppling, simple past and past participle toppled)

  1. (transitive) To push or throw over.
    • The massed crowds toppled the statue of the former dictator.
  2. To overturn.
  3. (figuratively) To overthrow something.
    • to topple one's rival
  4. (intransitive) To totter and fall, or to lean as if about to do so.
    • The pile of pennies began to topple.

See all 6 meanings of topple

Noun

toppling (plural topplings)

  1. The act by which something is toppled.
    • And in “Central Park in the Dark” and her haunting response to “The Unanswered Question,” Sokolow evokes more small-town anomie in spare shifts of ranks, topplings and rises.2008 April 22, Jennifer Dunning, “Works Not New, but Right for the Time”, in New York Times

Adjective

toppling (comparative more toppling, superlative most toppling)

  1. That which topples.
    • We analyzed data from continuous ambient vibration monitoring and concomitant crack aperture measurements at the Courthouse Mesa instability, a large toppling sandstone slab in Utah, USA.2024 June 27, Erin K. Jensen, Jeffrey Moore, et al, “Combined ambient vibration and surface displacement measurements for improved progressive failure monitoring at a toppling rock slab in Utah...

Forms of toppling

Noun
pluraltopplings
Adjective
comparativemore toppling
superlativemost toppling

Phrases with toppling

Questions about toppling

What does toppling mean?
Toppling means the act by which something is toppled.
What is toppling the present participle and gerund of?
Toppling is the present participle and gerund of topple.
What part of speech is toppling?
Toppling can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of toppling?
The plural of toppling is topplings.

Words near toppling in the dictionary

  1. toppler
  2. topplers
  3. topples
  4. topples over
  5. topplesome
  6. toppling
  7. toppling over
  8. topplings
  9. topply
  10. toppo
  11. toppoki

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: toppling (page history and authors); topple (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: “toppling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/toppling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.