stop

present singular third person stops · participle present stopping · participle past stopped · past stopped · first person past singular stopped · archaic present second person singular stoppest · past second person singular stopped · archaic past second person singular stoppedst · present singular third person stops · archaic present singular third person stoppeth · past singular third person stopped · past plural stopped · past subjunctive stopped · participle present stopping · participle past stopped · alternative dialectal obsolete stap

1. intransitiveTo cease moving.

   I stopped at the traffic lights.

   Synonyms: brake

2. intransitiveNot to continue.

   Soon the rain will stop.

   2 more examples

   The riots stopped when police moved in.

   Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: blin

3. transitiveTo cause (something) to cease moving or progressing.

   The sight of the armed men stopped him in his tracks.

   2 more examples

   This guy is a fraudster. I need to stop the cheque I wrote him.

   A “moving platform” scheme[…]is more technologically ambitious than maglev trains even though it relies on conventional rails.[…]This set-up solves several problems […]. Stopping high-speed trains wastes energy and time, so why not simply slow them down enough for a moving platform to pull alongside?

   2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly)

4. transitiveTo cease; to no longer continue.

   One of the wrestlers suddenly stopped fighting.

   Antonyms: keep

5. transitiveTo cause (something) to come to an end.

   The referees stopped the fight.

   Synonyms: blin

6. causativetransitiveTo interrupt, prevent or end the activity of someone or something.

   Don't let me stop you working.

   1 more example

   When they have finished the milk they must be patted and squeezed to stop them exploding.

   1988, Jeanne Willis, Tony Ross, Dr Xargle's Book of Earthlets

7. transitiveTo close or block an opening.

   He stopped the wound with gauze.

   2 more examples

   Rotten leaves and branches have stopped the gutter.

   I've had the cracks in the wall stopped with mortar by the builders.

8. intransitiveoftentransitiveartsTo adjust the aperture of a camera lens.

   To achieve maximum depth of field, he stopped down to an f-stop of 22.

9. intransitiveTo stay; to spend a short time; to reside or tarry temporarily.

   to stop with a friend

   4 more examples

   He stopped for two weeks at the inn.

   He stopped at his friend's house before continuing with his drive.

   Springhaven had done so well last week, that this week it meant to do still better, by stopping at home till the money was gone, and making short work afterwards.

   1886 April – 1887 April, Richard Doddridge Blackmore, “The Maroon”, in Springhaven. A Tale of the Great War. […], volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, […], published 1887, →OCLC, page 68

   She’s not going away. She’s going to stop here forever.

   1931, E. F. Benson, chapter 7, in Mapp & Lucia

   Synonyms: hang about, lodge

10. entertainmentTo regulate the sounds of (musical strings, etc.) by pressing them against the fingerboard with the finger, or otherwise shortening the vibrating part.
11. obsoleteTo punctuate.

    [Francesco] Guicciardini, if his sentences were properly stopt, would be found in general both full and concise, whatever may be asserted to the contrary by the fastidious and inattentive.

    1826, Walter Savage Landor, “Conversation XIII. [Vittorio] Alfieri and Salomon, the Florentine Jew.”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 415

12. nauticalTo make fast; to stopper.
13. transitivehuman sciencesTo pronounce (a phoneme) as a stop.

    th-stopping

14. transitivebusinessTo delay the purchase or sale of (a stock) while agreeing the price for later.

    It will be noted that the specialist would have refused to stop the stock for broker X if he (the specialist) had only one order to sell at 85.

    1952, Charles Amos Dice, Wilford John Eiteman, The Stock Market, page 144

15. To take out of service for repair, servicing or examination.

    The mechanical foreman is also present, and he gives a progress report of engines under repair and those stopped for their periodical routine examination.

    1960 April 28, A. W. Bennett, “A Locomotive Shedmaster's Day”, in Railway Magazine, page 272

16. To quit partaking in the use of or participation in (something).

    She stopped heroin last year.

    1 more example

    He stopped football to focus on acting.

plural stops

1. A (usually marked) place where buses, trams or trains halt to let passengers get on and off, usually smaller than a station.

   They agreed to meet at the bus stop.

2. An action of stopping; interruption of travel.

   That stop was not planned.

   3 more examples

   It is […] doubtful […] whether it contributed anything to the stop of the infection.

   1722, Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year

   Occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of natural philosophy.

   1704, I[saac] N[ewton], “(please specify |book=1 to 3)”, in Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. […], London: […] Sam[uel] Smith, and Benj[amin] Walford, printers to the Royal Society, […], →OCLC

   It is a great step toward the mastery of our desires to give this stop to them.

   1693, [John Locke], “§107”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], →OCLC

3. That which stops, impedes, or obstructs; an obstacle; an impediment.

   A fatal stop trauerst their headlong course

   1595, Samuel Daniel, “(please specify the folio number)”, in The First Fowre Bookes of the Ciuile Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke, London: […] P[eter] Short for Simon Waterson, →OCLC

   1 more example

   So melancholy a prospect should inspire us with zeal to oppose some stop to the rising torrent.

   a. 1729, John Rogers, The Advantages of conversing with good Men

4. A device intended to block the path of a moving object

   door stop

   1. engineeringA device, or piece, as a pin, block, pawl, etc., for arresting or limiting motion, or for determining the position to which another part shall be brought.
   2. architectureA member, plain or moulded, formed of a separate piece and fixed to a jamb, against which a door or window shuts.
5. human sciencesA consonant sound in which the passage of air is temporarily blocked by the lips, tongue, or glottis.

   Synonyms: plosive, occlusive

6. A symbol used for purposes of punctuation and representing a pause or separating clauses, particularly a full stop, comma, colon or semicolon.
7. entertainmentA knob or pin used to regulate the flow of air in an organ.

   The organ is loudest when all the stops are pulled.

8. entertainmentOne of the vent-holes in a wind instrument, or the place on the wire of a stringed instrument, by the stopping or pressing of which certain notes are produced.
9. hobbiesA very short shot which touches the ground close behind the net and is intended to bounce as little as possible.
10. ball gamesA save; preventing the opposition from scoring a goal.

    The Foxes were indebted to two crucial saves from keeper Kasper Schmeichel, who turned former Leicester defender Ben Chilwell's header on to a post then produced an even better stop to turn Mason Mount's powerful shot wide.

    2021 May 15, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 0-1 Leicester”, in BBC Sport

11. biologyThe depression in a dog’s face between the skull and the nasal bones.

    The stop in a bulldog's face is very marked.

12. A marking on a rabbit's hind foot.

    The American Rabbit Breeders Association holds that the stops of a Dutch rabbit should be white from the toes to one third of the way along the foot.

13. artsA part of a photographic system that reduces the amount of light.
14. artsA unit of exposure corresponding to a doubling of the brightness of an image.
15. artsAn f-stop.
16. The diaphragm used in optical instruments to cut off the marginal portions of a beam of light passing through lenses.
17. fencingA coup d'arret, or stop thrust.
18. UKabbreviationellipsisinformalgrammarEllipsis of full stop.

1. Used to indicate the end of a sentence in a telegram.

plural stops

1. UKdialectalA small well-bucket; a milk-pail.

plural stops

1. natural sciencesThe squark that is the superpartner of a top quark.

   For neutralino masses below approximately 700 GeV, gluino masses of less than 1.78 TeV and 1.76 TeV are excluded at the 95% CL in simplified models of the pair production of gluinos decaying via sbottom and stop, respectively.

   2016, ATLAS Collaboration, “Search for pair production of gluinos decaying via stop and sbottom in events with b-jets and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector”, in arXiv