Hoping has one p and means wanting something to happen. Hopping has two p’s and means jumping, or moving quickly from place to place.
The whole difference between hoping and hopping is one letter. That letter tells you whether the o is long or short.
- “Grandpa is hoping all four grandkids make it for Thanksgiving.” (wishing)
- “The toddler was hopping from one couch cushion to the next.” (jumping)
Why Hop Gets a Second P and Hope Doesn’t
Each word starts from a different base verb. Hoping comes from hope, and hopping comes from hop.
Two spelling patterns do the rest:
- The silent e drops. When a word ends in a silent e, you remove the e before adding -ing or -ed. Hope becomes hoping and hoped.
- Short words double the last letter. A one-syllable word ending in one vowel plus one consonant doubles that consonant. Hop becomes hopping and hopped.
The double p protects the short o. Without it, hop plus -ing would look exactly like hoping.
| Base verb | -ing form | Past tense |
| hope | hoping | hoped |
| hop | hopping | hopped |
Hopeing is incorrect, because the e always drops.
The doubling pattern skips words that end in w, x, or y. That’s why snowing, fixing, and playing get no extra letter.
Say Them Out Loud: A Long O and A Short O
These two words don’t sound alike. In American English:
- hoping rhymes with roping: HOH-ping
- hopping rhymes with shopping: HAH-ping
British speakers say hopping with the vowel in hot. In both accents, the sound points to the spelling. A long “oh” gets one p, and a short o gets two.
Hopping That Has Nothing to Do with Jumping
Here’s where many readers get stuck. Hopping shows up in plenty of sentences where nobody’s feet leave the ground.
| Sense | Example | What dictionaries say |
| Jump on one or both feet | The rabbit was hopping along the garden fence. | The core meaning everywhere |
| Get on a vehicle quickly | She’s hopping the 6:15 train to Philadelphia. | Informal. American Heritage notes that hop a freight train can mean riding without paying. |
| Move from place to place | We spent the week hopping between ferries in the Outer Banks. | Common in compounds like island-hopping and job-hopping |
| Very busy | The help desk was hopping after the outage. | Informal. Oxford labels it North American, and Merriam-Webster gives no region. |
| Very angry | My neighbor was hopping mad about the fence. | Used in the fixed phrase hopping mad |
| Flavored with hops | This IPA is dry-hopped, two p’s on purpose. | Comes from a separate word for the beer plant |
| Data passing between networks | Our traceroute showed the packet hopping through nine routers. | A technical sense in networking |
Merriam-Webster gives separate entries for the busy, angry, and place-to-place senses. It dates hopping itself to 1675.
“Hopping Mad” is Old, But Sources Don’t Agree How Old
US dictionaries list hopping mad with no regional label. It’s normal informal English in America, not a British-only phrase.
Its age is less settled. Dictionary.com shows three different dates on one page.
- Main entry: 1665 to 1675
- Idioms section: the early 1800s
- Slang section: 1840 or later
Etymonline sides with the oldest date and places it in the 1670s. What everyone agrees on is the picture behind it: someone so angry they jump up and down.
Bar-Hop, Barhop, or Bar Hop
Dictionaries split three ways on this one:
- bar-hop, with a hyphen: Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries
- barhop, as one word: Britannica and Random House
- bar hop, as two words: WordNet, used by Vocabulary.com
For US writing, the hyphen is a sensible choice. Merriam-Webster prints bar-hopping that way, and so did a CNBC story about a bride-to-be “bar-hopping at her favorite spots in Chicago.” Whatever form you pick, keep it the same through the whole piece.
“Hopping” for Busy Belongs in Casual Writing
Oxford and Merriam-Webster’s learner’s dictionary both mark this sense as informal. A news sentence quoted on Dictionary.com shows it at work: “Wages rise more quickly when the jobs market is hopping.”
That’s fine in a blog post or a text. In a report or a formal email, busy is clearer.
Hope and Hop Aren’t Related
They look like a pair, but they grew from two different Old English verbs. Hopian meant to hope, and hoppian meant to leap.
The beer word hops is a third word entirely, borrowed from Middle Dutch.
Both Spellings are Real Words, So Reread The Sentence
Typing an extra p, or dropping one, still gives you a real word. That makes this slip easy to miss when you proofread.
It even reaches print. A news sentence about a political endorsement, collected on Dictionary.com, says a man “is hopping his chapter will endorse her.” The writer meant hoping.
Reference sites slip too. Forvo’s page for “hoping” shows a definition that actually describes hopping: jumping upward or forward.
When a sentence looks off, run this two-step check:
- Remove the -ing and test the base word. “I’m hopping you can review this by EOD” becomes “I hop you can review this.” That makes no sense, so you need hoping.
- Read it aloud. A sentence about a wish uses the long “oh” sound, and that means one p.
The fixed sentence: “I’m hoping you can review this by EOD.”
The numbers back you up. In Google Books data for 2022, “hoping to” shows up about 190 times as often as “hopping to”. Even that small “hopping to” count includes correct uses, like hopping to the door.
The misspelling hopeing is rare in edited books. It peaked in the 1810s and has stayed low ever since.
“I Was Hoping” and Other Polite Ways to Ask
Hope turns up in a lot of requests, and the verb form changes the tone.
- I hope states a general wish: “I hope the interview goes well.”
- I’m hoping points to a wish you’re holding right now: “She’s hoping the scholarship letter arrives before spring break.”
- I was hoping softens a request: “I was hoping we could move Thursday’s review to Friday.”
The past tense in that last example doesn’t mean the hope is over. It makes the request less direct, the way could sounds gentler than can.
For something that already happened, plain I hope sounds more natural. Write “I hope you had a good weekend,” not “I’m hoping you had a good weekend.”
Hop and Hopping at Work, in Clinics, and in Tech
- Meetings. “Can you hop on a call?” means “Can you join a call?” It’s common in offices but casual, and London’s City A.M. named this kind of phrase worst corporate jargon of the week.
- Physical therapy. After knee surgery, hop tests compare the injured leg with the healthy one. Clinicians often look for at least 90% of the healthy leg’s score. In a rehab note, you’d write “The therapist added hopping drills,” never “hoping drills.”
- Networking. A hop happens each time data passes from one network segment to the next. IPv4 limits the number of hops with a field called time to live (TTL), and IPv6 calls it the hop limit.
- Wireless. Frequency hopping means a signal switches rapidly between channels. Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil filed a patent for it in June 1941, granted in August 1942. Bluetooth uses a form of it today.
- Careers. “Her résumé shows three years of job-hopping.” Job-hop is a standard dictionary word for changing jobs often.
Hope and Hop Side By Side
| Hope | Hop | |
| Core meaning | Want something to happen | Jump; move or travel quickly |
| Vowel sound | Long o, as in rope | Short o, as in mop |
| -ing form | hoping | hopping |
| Past tense | hoped | hopped |
| As a noun | Her hope is a spot on the varsity team. | The shortstop fielded it on the second hop. |
| Common phrases | here’s hoping, hope against hope | hopping mad, hop to it, island-hopping |
Can You Start a Sentence with “Hopefully”?
Yes. The AP Stylebook accepted hopefully meaning “it is hoped” in April 2012. Before that, AP allowed only the sense “in a hopeful manner.”
The Chicago Manual of Style treats it as grammatical too. It does advise rewording when a sentence could be read two ways.
“Hopefully, she’ll apply for the job” is one of those sentences. Is she hopeful, or are you? “I hope she’ll apply for the job” removes the doubt.
Some readers still object. Acceptance among the American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel rose from 34% in 1999 to 63% in 2012, so plenty still say no.
When you can’t tell which word you need, take off the -ing and look at what’s left. A wish calls for hoping with one p. Feet, trains, data packets, and packed restaurants call for hopping with two.
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I’m Hazel, and I studied BSC English at GCUF. I focus on explaining word meanings in simple, clear language that anyone can understand. My goal is helping readers grasp everyday English, confusing terms, and slang used in real conversations and social media. I believe language learning works best when definitions connect to actual life situations. Through careful research and straightforward explanations, I make vocabulary accessible for students, learners, and anyone curious about how English really works in daily use.