Etimology
From Late Middle English droppe, Middle English drope (“small quantity of liquid; small or least amount of something; pendant jewel; dripping of a liquid; a shower; nasal flow, catarrh; speck, spot; blemish; disease causing spots on the skin”) [and other forms], from Old English dropa (“a drop”), from Proto-West Germanic *dropō (“drop (of liquid)”), from Proto-Germanic *drupô (“drop (of liquid)”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewb- (“to crumble, grind”).
noun
drop (plural drops)
(also figuratively) A small quantity of liquid, just large enough to hold its own round shape through surface tension, especially one that falls from a source of liquid.
(figuratively) A very small quantity of liquid, or (by extension) of anything.
That which hangs or resembles a liquid globule, such as a hanging diamond earring or ornament, a glass pendant on a chandelier, etc.
A thing which drops or hangs down.
An act or instance of dropping (in all senses).
A decline in degree, quality, quantity, or rate.
The distance through which something drops, or falls below a certain level.
A place where items or supplies may be left for others to collect, whether openly (as with a mail drop), or secretly or illegally (as in crime or espionage); a drop-off point.
(informal) Only used in get the drop on, have the drop on An advantage.
(music) A point in a song, usually electronic music such as dubstep, house, trance, or trap, where there is a very noticeable and pleasing change in bass, tempo, and/or overall tone; a climax, a highlight.
Examples
Put three drops of oil into the mixture.
A circular horizontal surface of indefinite diameter gave a drop of water weighing 2·10 grains. This is therefore the weight of the maximum drop formed on a flat surface, and it will be seen that it very nearly coincides with the weight of the drop formed upon a surface seven-tenths of an inch diameter. The drop in this case is always formed at the centre of the surface, this being the centre of the greatest molecular attraction amongst the liquid particles.
My first treatment consisted of one eye drop in each eye which was supposed to determine the condition of the eye and make it easier to examine them the next day.
The eye is able to hold only about 20 percent of the amount of fluid in a standard eye drop. Therefore, put only one eye drop in your eye at a time. If you have been instructed to use more than one eye drop, wait about 5 minutes between the drops. This will allow more of the drops to be absorbed and will reduce waste.
ear drops eye drops
My aunt asked for just a drop more tea.
He was thirsty but there wasn’t a drop of water to be found
They didn’t show a drop of remorse
BAZARIN: Zoya Sergeevna, just a drop more tea, if you would. / ZOYA SERGEEVNA: Do you want it strong?
Finally she landed the role, and glory be to God, her best friend Melanie landed the role of Anne's best friend. Not one drop of help did she get from her showbiz parents, who were far too preoccupied with the shape of twenty-four table centre-pieces, […]
He usually enjoys a drop after dinner. She won’t touch a drop while she’s on duty.
It doesn’t matter where you’re from, anyone who enjoys the drop is a friend of mine.
She is rather fond of her drops, and is then particularly good-humoured; it is only when she is getting sober that she is querulous and nervous.
Drops are another source of juice apple supply. As the pickers pick apples in orchards oriented toward fresh-market or canning apples, apples fall or are accidentally knocked to the ground; these are drops. The only use for drops is juice production.
Drops are fruit that has fallen to the ground naturally or that is dropped or knocked off during harvest. Drops have no value except for pressing for juice. While the value of drops is usually minimal, they must be removed from the orchards; otherwise, they attract mice which later in the season, once the apples are gone, gnaw on the roots of apple trees.
But in the fall, when apples are abundant and cheap, I like to make my own [applesauce]. I'll often buy a few bags of "drops" just for this purpose. Drops are apples that have fallen from the trees instead of being picked. They're less expensive since they might have a bruise or two, but otherwise they're fresh nd juicy.
Biologically based IPM goes further by integrating orchard practices for common gain. Thus, in a second-level IPM orchard, sprays are withheld after June to allow beneficial insect populations to rebuild; summer maggot fly incursions are trapped at the border; drops are removed to limit in-orchard pest pupation; and fall sanitation is used to reduce disease inoculum the following spring.
Drops are often considered the same as windfalls, and some people insist that any fruit that has fallen to the ground—no matter for how short a time—should not be used for making cider. […] Drops, on the other hand [unlike windfalls], are fruits that have sat around on the ground for a longer period of time—typically a day or more.
Yet another drop for the Tiger tight end.
As the prisoners prepared to leave, they had seen Dan and Steve standing together in the breezeway, ‘for all the world like two condemned prisoners on the drop’.
Crook: "I'll find the killers for you, I swear." / Cop: "So why didn't you?" / Crook: "I'm scared of 'em." / Cop: "More than the drop?" / Crook: "Aye. Maybe."
La Cage's upstage drops include two of the St. Tropez harbor , [... an] ocean drop , and an abstract chandelier drop .
In The Rover, one of these esthetically important elements was the arrangement of the upstage drops. Originally the drop was split into three sections, with obvious and blatant seams between them.
That was a long drop, but fortunately I didn’t break any bones.
The slope of the terrain, shaped like a funnel, squeezed the growing swell of churning snow into a steep, twisting gorge. It moved in surges, like a roller coaster on a series of drops and high-banked turns.
The delivery driver has to make three more drops before lunch.
The spy made the drop, leaving the plans under the tree as arranged.
That was how a drug deal went down? […] Karl shook his head and pulled away from the curb, heading for his next drop and feeling distinctly uncomfortable about the mass of cash now keeping the drugs in his bags company.
2002 saw the drop of a new album whose title riffed on the many magazine cover stories calling Sum 41's music infectious.
Turned out this was the drop party for popster Effigy's latest release, BeatMeKickMeHoldMe.
What the first column in the table shows you is how much the casinos won as a percentage of the drop. For example, on the roulette table for every $100 that went into the drop box the casino wonj $22.70 or 22.70%. […] In other words, the drop tells you how many chips were bought at that table, but it doesn't tell you how many bets were made with those chips.
[A]ll those present shared the all-important political connections required to get a ticket to the execution. News reporters, doctors, and members of the juries had prime spots right by the platform, so that they could see the drop and record the time of death.
The Tiger quarterback took a one-step drop, expecting his tight end to be open.
The drop in demand for oil resulted in a drop in prices.
[T]he volume of money was expected to fluctuate with the volume of business activity so that a drop in business activity would bring a drop in the volume of money outstanding. […] If the volume of money is reduced, it tends to produce a slight drop in demand for all sorts of commodities.
On one side of the road was a 50-foot drop.
An Ananda truck coming down a steep, winding mountain road completely lost its brakes and crashed through a thin guard rail over an almost sheer 1000 foot drop. It was caught and held by a solitary tree that was growing in the one and only spot where it could prevent a certain fatal plunge. No one was even slightly injured.
A further point is, that the convenience of the ship herself may interfere with the disposition of sails. A high forecastle will shorten the drop of the foresail, and a poop may seriously interfere with the spanker.
Her mainyard was 80 feet long, and her mainsail had a drop of 40 feet.
Because this natural bulging was not adequate, the sails were deliberately made to round outward by cutting the cloths longer than necessary for the drop of the sail.
I left the plans at the drop, like you asked.
A drop is a place where the stolen property can be stored. It may be a warehouse, an apartment, or a garage. At the drop, a group of persons called loaders remove the merchandise from the truck and store it.
But musical ancestry aside, the influence to which [Justin] Bieber is most beholden is the current trends in pop music, which means Believe is loaded up with EDM [electronic dance music] accouterments, seeking a comfortable middle ground where Bieber’s impressively refined pop-R&B croon can rub up on techno blasts and garish dubstep drops .
Just as dubstep has grown in popularity and combined with many different genres, the drop has become a generalized type of which there are many individually varying instances, including dubstep bass-drop. As LA Times critic Randall Roberts notes, even good-girl tween pop idol Taylor Swift uses a drop in her Max-Martin-Produced track “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
Related words
hyponyms
cough drop
dewdrop
eye-drop
raindrop
teardrop
turkey drop
Etimology
From Middle English droppen, dropen (“to fall in drops, drip or trickle down; to scatter, sprinkle; to be covered with a liquid; to give off moisture; of an object: to drop, fall; of a living being: to fall to the ground”) [and other forms], from Old English dropian, droppian (“to drop”), from dropa (“a drop”) (see further at etymology 1) + -ian (suffix forming verbs from adjectives and nouns).
verb
drop (third-person singular simple present drops, present participle dropping, simple past and past participle dropped or (archaic) dropt)
(intransitive) Of a liquid: to fall in drops or droplets. [from 11th c.]
(intransitive, also figuratively) To fall (straight down) under the influence of gravity, like a drop of liquid. [from 14th c.]
(intransitive) To fall or sink quickly or suddenly to the ground. [from 15th c.]
(intransitive) To collapse in exhaustion or injury; also, to fall dead, or to fall in death.
(intransitive) To fall into a particular condition or state.
(intransitive) To come to an end (by not being kept up); to lapse, to stop. [from 17th c.]
(intransitive) To decrease, diminish, or lessen in condition, degree, value, etc. [from 18th c.]
(intransitive) To fall behind or to the rear of a group of people, etc., as a result of not keeping up with those at the front.
(intransitive) Usually followed by by, in, or into: of a person: to visit someone or somewhere informally or without a prior appointment.
(intransitive, computing, music, television, colloquial) Of a programme, software, a music album or song, etc.: to enter public distribution.
(intransitive, gambling) To drop out of the betting.
(intransitive, physiology, informal) Of the testicles: to hang further away from the body and begin producing sperm due to puberty.
(intransitive, obsolete) To let drops fall; to discharge itself in drops.
(transitive) To drip (a liquid) in drops or small amounts. [from 14th c.]
(transitive, ergative, also figuratively) To let (something) fall; to allow (something) to fall (either by releasing hold of, or losing one's grip on). [from 14th c.]
(transitive) To move to a lower position; to allow to hang downwards; to lower.
(transitive) To reduce; to make smaller.
(transitive) Of an animal (usually a sheep): to give birth to (young); of a bird: to lay (an egg).
(transitive) To mention (something) casually or incidentally, usually in conversation. [from 17th c.]
(transitive) To let (a letter, etc.) fall into a postbox; hence, to send (a letter, email, or other message) in an offhand manner. [from 18th c.]
(transitive) To make (someone or something) fall to the ground from a blow, gunshot, etc.; to bring down, to shoot down. [from 18th c.]
(transitive) To set down (someone or something) from a vehicle; to stop and deliver or deposit (someone or something); to drop off.
(transitive) To lower (a sound, a voice, etc.) in pitch or volume.
(transitive) To cease concerning oneself over (someone or something); to have nothing more to do with (a discussion, subject, etc.). [from 17th c.]
(transitive) To dispose or get rid of (something); to lose, to remove.
(transitive) To cease to include (something), as if on a list; to dismiss, to eject, to expel.
(transitive) To cancel or cease to participate in (a scheduled course, event, or project).
(transitive, slang)
(transitive, computing, music, television, colloquial) To release (a programme, software, a music album or song, etc.) to the public.
(transitive, linguistics) To fail to write, or (especially) to pronounce (a syllable, letter, etc.). [from 19th c.]
(transitive, music)
(transitive, sports)
(transitive, archaic) To cover (something) with or as if with drops, especially of a different colour; to bedrop, to variegate.
(intransitive, computing) To enter a more basic interface.
(transitive, computing) To present (the user) with a more basic interface.
Examples
The kindlye dewe drops from the higher tree, / And wets the little plants that lowly dwell.
A single shot was fired and the bird dropped from the sky.
Drop and give me thirty push-ups, private!
If your clothes are on fire, stop, drop and roll.
Nothing, ſays Seneca, is ſo melancholy a circumſtance in human life, or ſo ſoon reconciles us to the thought of our own death, as the reflection and prospect of one friend after another dropping round us!
When he again found privacy consistent, however—and it happened to be long in coming—he took up their conversation very much where it had dropped.
The stock dropped 1.5% yesterday.
We can take our vacation when the price of fuel drops.
Watch for the temperature to drop sharply, then you’ll know the reaction is complete.
The equipment shows how much the glacier has moved and the amount it dropped in height over the summer.
This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything. In a moment she had dropped to the level of a casual labourer.
My synthesizer makes the notes sound funny when they drop below C2.
The song, 180 beats per minute, drops to 150 BPM near the end.
Billy’s voice dropped suddenly when he turned 12.
The 18-year-old [Justin] Bieber can’t quite pull off the “adult” thing just yet: His voice may have dropped a bit since the days of “Baby,” but it still mostly registers as “angelic,” and veers toward a pubescent whine at times.
Do drop by soon and I’ll lend you that book.
We’ll drop in on her tomorrow.
He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.
The album Hip-Hop Xmas dropped in time for the holidays.
But more important, if I dropped, Marty would have won the hand automatically.
The heavens […] dropped at the presence of God.
The recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.
persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops
Don’t drop that plate! The police ordered the men to drop their weapons.
But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater.
The stare seemed to abash Poirot. He dropped his eyes and began fiddling with the papers in front of him.
Drop a basket of fries.
Here is a simple example: suppose you are in the process of writing a 15-page proposal and at a certain point you decide that, in order to fit all your material, you want to drop the font size from 12 to 11.
to drop a lamb
The lecturer would drop hints whenever the students struggled.
name drop
By 1996, ‘jungle’ and ‘drum and bass’ were the words to drop.
As she had a free moment, she dropped her a text.
Drop me a note when you get to the city.
Make any sudden movements and I will drop you!
page 562: ...if the first shot does not drop him, and he rushes on, the second will be a very hurried and most likely ineffectual one...
page 568 ...with a single shot he dropped him like a master of the art.
As with all other animals, a shot behind the shoulder is the most likely to drop the beast on the spot […]
He dropped the beast with a bullet in its heart.
The piano player's out, the music stopped / His boy had beef, and he got dropped...
With a quick clench of the fist on Joey's throat, Bodie dropped him. The man crumpled to the ground […]
Could you drop me at the airport on your way to work tomorrow?
I’ll be dropping the parcel at your place later.
I’m tired of this subject. Will you just drop it?
They suddenly dropt the pursuit.
The connection had been dropped many years.
that astonishing ease with which fine ladies drop you and pick you up again
I dropped ten pounds and an obnoxious fiancée.
I’ve been dropped from the football team.
If Carly Telford’s replacement of Karen Bardsley, because of a hamstring injury, was enforced, the switch to 4-4-1-1 was not. This new-look configuration saw Rachel Daly deployed in front of Lucy Bronze down the right, Toni Duggan and Fran Kirby dropped, Beth Mead introduced on the left and Nikita Parris moved up front.
I had to drop calculus because it was taking up too much of my time.
The specialists she had taken her daughter to see attributed her collection of symptoms to the lingering effect of the many concussions she suffered playing sports. She had at least one concussion every year since she was in the fourth grade. Because of her frequent head injuries, her parents made her drop all her sports.
The question was: Who put the most in the collection box? The wealthy guy, who dropped a “C” note, or the tattered old dame who parted with her last tarnished penny.
I forked over the $19.25. I was in no position to be dropping twenties like gumdrops but I deserved something good from this crappy morning.
I drop knowledge wherever I go.
They dropped the album Hip-Hop Xmas in time for the holidays.
That hacker has been threatening to drop my docs [i.e. publish my personal information].
Cockneys drop their aitches.
I love it when he drops his funky beats.
That guy can drop the bass like a monster.
Yo, I drop rhymes like nobody’s business.
Warne dropped Tendulkar on 99. Tendulkar went on to get a century next ball.
their waved coats dropped with gold
Next, you drop to a shell.
The next step drops the user to a recovery shell.