Other forms: stamps, stamped, stamping
A stamp is the small square of sticky paper you press into the corner of an envelope so that the post office will carry it. A printed picture with a jagged edge, licked and thumped flat with the side of your fist.
Stamp is a verb twice over. You stamp your foot when you are furious and you stamp on a spider; and you stamp a document, pressing an inked block down onto it, which is where the paper kind got its name in the first place. Officials stamp passports, and a stamped addressed envelope is what a competition asks you to enclose. Stamp out is the one worth learning: you stamp out a fire, a rumour, a disease, and it means ending the thing by force rather than by argument. A rubber stamp, said of a person or a committee, is an insult — they approve whatever is put in front of them.
1nounstampA small piece of gummed paper stuck to a letter to pay for it to be carried.~81%
“The envelope needs a second stamp, it is too heavy.”
synonyms: postage
2verbstompTo bring your foot down hard on the ground or on something.~5%
“He stamped on the fire until the last of it was out.”
3verbpressTo press an inked or metal block onto paper so that it leaves a mark.~2%
“The officer stamped my passport without looking up.”
4nounsealThe block that makes such a mark, and the mark it leaves.~12%
“The library stamp on the first page was dated 1974.”
synonyms: seal, mark
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 157 sentences found in the wild and placed 137 of them on a sense (20 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
To stamp meant to pound and crush long before it meant to post a letter: Middle English stampen, from a Germanic word for trampling and beating, and back beyond that to a root meaning to tread a thing down. The postal sense is a straight line from it. Proof that postage had been paid was made by stamping the letter itself, and when small pieces of gummed paper arrived to do the same job, the name walked across to them and stayed.
Middle English
stampen
English, today
stamp
Built from
From Middle English stampen. From Middle English stampen (“to pound, crush”), from assumed Old English stampian, variant of Old English stempan (“to crush, pound, pound in mortar, stamp”), from Proto-West Germanic stampōn, stampijan, from Proto-Germanic stampōną, stampijaną (“to trample, beat”), from Proto-Indo-European stemb- (“to trample down”). Cognate with Dutch stampen (“to stamp, pitch”), German stampfen (“to stamp”), Danish stampe (“to stamp”), Swedish stampa (“to stomp”), Occitan estampar, Polish stąpać (“to step, treat”). See also stomp, step. Marks indicating that postage had been paid were originally made by stamping the item to be mailed; when affixed pieces of paper were introduced for this purpose, the term “stamp” was transferred to cover this new form.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA