Word.ws English Dictionary

wapping

UK/wɒpɪŋ/

wapping is the present participle and gerund of wap.

wapping is the archaic form of whopping.

Meaning of wap

Verb

wap (third-person singular simple present waps, present participle wapping, simple past and past participle wapped)

  1. (UK) To beat; to whap.
    • Sir, he said, I saw nothing but the waters wap and the waves wan.1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “How king Arthur commanded to cast his sword Excalibur into the water and how he was delivered to ladies in a barge”, in Le Morte d'Arthur, London: MacMillan & Co, published...
    Synonyms:
    attack
  2. (UK, archaic, thieves' cant) To engage in sexual intercourse.
    • Ben mort, shall you and I heave a bough, mill a ken, or nip a bung, and then we'll couch a hogshead under the ruffmans, and there you shall wap with me, and I'll niggle with you.1611, Thomas Middleton, “The Roaring Girl”, in Arthur Henry Bullen, editor, The Works of Thomas Middleton, volume 4, published 1885, act 5, scene 1, pages 128–129
    Synonyms:
    copulate
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To wrap or bind.

See all 8 meanings of wap

Meaning of whopping

Adjective

whopping (not comparable)

  1. (colloquial) Exceptionally great or large.
    • It weighed a whopping 700 pounds when it was full.
    Synonyms:
    large

See all 3 meanings of whopping

Proper noun capitalized: Wapping

Wapping

  1. A district of London in the borough of Tower Hamlets, Greater London, England (OS grid ref TQ3480).

Phrases with wapping

Questions about wapping

What does wapping mean?
Wapping means a district of London in the borough of Tower Hamlets, Greater London, England (OS grid ref TQ3480).
What is wapping the present participle and gerund of?
Wapping is the present participle and gerund of wap.
What part of speech is wapping?
Wapping is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce wapping?
Wapping is pronounced /wɒpɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near wapping in the dictionary

  1. wapper-jawed
  2. wappered
  3. wappering
  4. wapperjawed
  5. wappers
  6. wapping
  7. wapping cove
  8. wapping coves
  9. wapping dell
  10. wapping dells
  11. wapping ken

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wapping (page history and authors); Wapping (page history and authors); wap (page history and authors); whopping (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:

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