Bottoming

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The action of moving down to or reaching the lowest level ; the process of forming a base layer or foundation ; participating in a sexual activity by assuming the receptive position
2. Descending or falling to the bottommost position ; establishing a supportive or foundational layer beneath something ; taking part in a sexual relationship by being the partner who receives
3. Coming down until the lowest part is reached ; creating or supplying an underlying structure for support ; adopting the role in sexual acts where one is the receiver

Etymology: Bottoming is simply the -ing form of "bottom" used as a verb meaning "reaching the lowest level," and the word it comes from is one of the oldest in English. Its root reaches back to a Proto-Indo-European term for "bottom," and the same ancestor produced words for the floor, ground or base of things across much of the Indo-European world. Old English "botm" meant the bottom, foundation or ground, and Germanic relatives such as German "Boden" and Dutch "bodem" still carry the sense of floor or soil. The Latin "fundus," meaning bottom, is a distant cousin, and it gave English "fund" through French, a surprising link between a bottom and a pool of money. The verb sense "to reach the bottom of" is recorded only from 1808, so the idea of hitting a lowest point is much newer than the noun. The noun itself was used for the posterior of a person from 1794, which is why the word's bawdier associations are comparatively recent.

Synonyms: reaching the lowest point