Etimology
From Middle English stoppen, stoppien, from Old English stoppian (“to stop, close”), from Proto-West Germanic *stoppōn, from Proto-Germanic *stuppōną (“to stop, close”), *stuppijaną (“to push, pierce, prick”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewp-, *(s)tewb- (“to push; stick”), from *(s)tew- (“to bump; impact; butt; push; beat; strike; hit”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian stopje (“to stop, block”), West Frisian stopje (“to stop”), Dutch stoppen (“to stop”), Low German stoppen (“to stop”), German stopfen (“to be filling, stuff”), German stoppen (“to stop”), Danish stoppe (“to stop”), Swedish stoppa (“to stop”), Icelandic stoppa (“to stop”), Middle High German stupfen, stüpfen (“to pierce”). More at stuff, stump. Alternative etymology derives Proto-West Germanic *stoppōn from an assumed Vulgar Latin *stūpāre, *stuppāre (“to stop up with tow”), from stūpa, stīpa, stuppa (“tow, flax, oakum”), from Ancient Greek στύπη (stúpē), στύππη (stúppē, “tow, flax, oakum”). This derivation, however, is doubtful, as the earliest instances of the Germanic verb do not carry the meaning of "stuff, stop with tow". Rather, these senses developed later in response to influence from similar sounding words in Latin and Romance.
verb
stop (third-person singular simple present stops, present participle stopping, simple past and past participle stopped)
(intransitive) To cease moving.
(intransitive) Not to continue.
(transitive) To cause (something) to cease moving or progressing.
(transitive) To cease; to no longer continue (doing something).
(transitive) To cause (something) to come to an end.
(causative, transitive, chiefly UK) To end someone else's activity.
(transitive) To close or block an opening.
(transitive, intransitive, photography, often with "up" or "down") To adjust the aperture of a camera lens.
(intransitive) To stay; to spend a short time; to reside or tarry temporarily.
(music) To regulate the sounds of (musical strings, etc.) by pressing them against the fingerboard with the finger, or otherwise shortening the vibrating part.
(obsolete) To punctuate.
(nautical) To make fast; to stopper.
(phonetics, transitive) To pronounce (a phoneme) as a stop.
(finance, transitive) To delay the purchase or sale of (a stock) while agreeing the price for later.
Examples
I stopped at the traffic lights.
The riots stopped when police moved in.
Soon the rain will stop.
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.
The sight of the armed men stopped him in his tracks.
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?
One of the wrestlers suddenly stopped fighting.
Please stop telling me those terrible jokes.
The referees stopped the fight.
When they have finished the milk they must be patted and squeezed to stop them exploding.
He stopped the wound with gauze.
To achieve maximum depth of field, he stopped down to an f-stop of 22.
to stop with a friend
He stopped for two weeks at the inn.
He stopped at his friend's house before continuing with his drive.
by stopping at home till the money was gone
She’s not going away. She’s going to stop here forever.
if his sentences were properly stopped
th-stopping
It will be noted that the specialist would have refused to stop the stock for broker X if he had only one order to sell at 85.
Related words
synonyms
(to cease moving): brake, desist, halt; See also Thesaurus:stop
(not to continue): blin, cease, desist, discontinue, halt, terminate; See also Thesaurus:desist
(to cause to cease moving): arrest, freeze, halt; See also Thesaurus:immobilize
(to cause to come to an end): blin, cancel, cease, discontinue, halt, terminate; See also Thesaurus:end
(to tarry): hang about, hang around, linger, loiter, pause; See also Thesaurus:tarry
(to reside temporarily): lodge, stop over; See also Thesaurus:sojourn
antonyms
(antonym(s) of "to cease moving"): continue, go, move, proceed
(antonym(s) of "not to continue"): continue, proceed
(antonym(s) of "to cause to cease moving"): continue, move
(antonym(s) of "to cause to come to an end"): continue, move
hyponyms
forstop
stop by
stop cock
stop down
stop in
stop off
stop out
stop over
stop up
unstop
noun
stop (plural stops)
A (usually marked) place where buses, trams or trains halt to let passengers get on and off, usually smaller than a station.
An action of stopping; interruption of travel.
That which stops, impedes, or obstructs; an obstacle; an impediment.
A device intended to block the path of a moving object
(linguistics) A consonant sound in which the passage of air is temporarily blocked by the lips, tongue, or glottis.
A symbol used for purposes of punctuation and representing a pause or separating clauses, particularly a full stop, comma, colon or semicolon.
(music) A knob or pin used to regulate the flow of air in an organ.
(music) One 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.
(tennis) A very short shot which touches the ground close behind the net and is intended to bounce as little as possible.
(soccer) A save; preventing the opposition from scoring a goal
(zoology) The depression in a dog’s face between the skull and the nasal bones.
A marking on a rabbit's hind foot.
(photography) A part of a photographic system that reduces the amount of light.
(photography) A unit of exposure corresponding to a doubling of the brightness of an image.
(photography) An f-stop.
The diaphragm used in optical instruments to cut off the marginal portions of a beam of light passing through lenses.
(fencing) A coup d'arret, or stop thrust.
(UK, grammar, informal) Short for full stop.
Examples
Related terms: halt, station.
They agreed to meet at the bus stop.
That stop was not planned.
It is […] doubtful […] whether it contributed anything to the stop of the infection.
Occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of natural philosophy.
It is a great step toward the mastery of our desires to give this stop to them.
A fatal stop trauerst their headlong course
So melancholy a prospect should inspire us with zeal to oppose some stop to the rising torrent.
door stop
Synonyms: plosive, occlusive
The organ is loudest when all the stops are pulled.
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.
The stop in a bulldog's face is very marked.
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.
Etimology
From Middle English stoppe, from Old English stoppa (“bucket, pail, a stop”), from Proto-Germanic *stuppô (“vat, vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teub- (“to push, hit; stick, stump”). See stoup.
noun
stop (plural stops)
(UK dialectal) A small well-bucket; a milk-pail.
Etimology
s- + top
noun
stop (plural stops)
(physics) The squark that is the superpartner of a top quark.
Examples
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.