English
stop
Pronunciation Verb

stop (stops, present participle stopping; past and past participle stopped)

  1. (intransitive) To cease moving.
    I stopped at the traffic lights.
  2. (intransitive) To not continue.
    The riots stopped when police moved in.
    Soon the rain will stop.
  3. (transitive) To cause (something) to cease moving or progressing.
    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.
  4. (transitive) To cease; to no longer continue (doing something).
    One of the wrestlers suddenly stopped fighting.
    Please stop telling me those terrible jokes.
  5. (transitive) To cause (something) to come to an end.
    The referees stopped the fight.
  6. (transitive) To close or block an opening.
    He stopped the wound with gauze.
  7. (transitive, intransitive, photography, often with "up" or "down") To adjust the aperture of a camera lens.
    To achieve maximum depth of field, he stopped down to an f-stop of 22.
  8. (intransitive) To stay; to spend a short time; to reside or tarry temporarily.
    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
    • 1931, E. F. Benson, Mapp & Lucia ↗, chapter 7
      She’s not going away. She’s going to stop here forever.
  9. (music) To regulate the sounds of (musical strings, etc.) by pressing them against the fingerboard with the finger, or otherwise shortening the vibrating part.
  10. (obsolete) To punctuate.
    • if his sentences were properly stopped
  11. (nautical) To make fast; to stopper.
Synonyms Antonyms Related terms
  • the buck stops here
Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations
  • French: s'arrêter
  • Portuguese: parar
  • Russian: остана́вливаться
Noun

stop (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.
    Related terms: halt, station.
    They agreed to meet at the bus stop.
  2. An action of stopping; interruption of travel.
    That stop was not planned.
    • 1722, Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year
      It is […] doubtful […] whether it contributed anything to the stop of the infection.
    • Occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of natural philosophy.
    • 1693, [John Locke], “§107”, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, London: […] A[wnsham] and J[ohn] Churchill, […], OCLC 1161614482 ↗:
      It is a great step toward the mastery of our desires to give this stop to them.
  3. That which stops, impedes, or obstructs; an obstacle; an impediment.
    • A fatal stop traversed their headlong course.
    • So melancholy a prospect should inspire us with zeal to oppose some stop to the rising torrent.
  4. A device intended to block the path of a moving object
    door stop
    1. (engineering) A 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. (architecture) A member, plain or moulded, formed of a separate piece and fixed to a jamb, against which a door or window shuts.
  5. (linguistics) A consonant sound in which the passage of air through the mouth 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. (music) A knob or pin used to regulate the flow of air in an organ.
    The organ is loudest when all the stops are pulled.
  8. (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.
  9. (tennis) A very short shot which touches the ground close behind the net and is intended to bounce as little as possible.
  10. (zoology) The depression in a dog’s face between the skull and the nasal bones.
    The stop in a bulldog's face is very marked.
  11. (photography) An f-stop.
  12. The diaphragm used in optical instruments to cut off the marginal portions of a beam of light passing through lenses.
  13. (fencing) A coup d'arret, or stop thrust.
Translations Translations Translations
  • German: Stopper
  • Italian: pulsante di arresto
  • Portuguese: calço
  • Russian: ограничи́тель
Translations Translations Translations Noun

stop (plural stops)

  1. (UK dialectal) A small well-bucket; a milk-pail.
Adjective

stop (not comparable)

  1. (physics) Being or relating to the squark that is the superpartner of a top quark.


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