stop

—stopless, adj. —stoplessness, n.

/stop/, v., stopped or (Archaic) stopt; stopping; n.

v.t.

1. to cease from, leave off, or discontinue: to stop running.

2. to cause to cease; put an end to: to stop noise in the street.

3. to interrupt, arrest, or check (a course, proceeding, process, etc.): Stop your work just a minute.

4. to cut off, intercept, or withhold: to stop supplies.

5. to restrain, hinder, or prevent (usually fol. by from): I couldn't stop him from going.

6. to prevent from proceeding, acting, operating, continuing, etc.: to stop a speaker; to stop a car.

7. to block, obstruct, or close (a passageway, channel, opening, duct, etc.) (usually fol. by up): He stopped up the sink with a paper towel. He stopped the hole in the tire with a patch.

8. to fill the hole or holes in (a wall, a decayed tooth, etc.).

9. to close (a container, tube, etc.) with a cork, plug, bung, or the like.

10. to close the external orifice of (the ears, nose, mouth, etc.).

11. Sports.

a. to check (a stroke, blow, etc.); parry; ward off.

b. to defeat (an opposing player or team): The Browns stopped the Colts.

c. Boxing. to defeat by a knockout or technical knockout: Louis stopped Conn in the 13th round.

12. Banking. to notify a bank to refuse payment of (a check) upon presentation.

13. Bridge. to have an honor card and a sufficient number of protecting cards to keep an opponent from continuing to win in (a suit).

14. Music.

a. to close (a fingerhole) in order to produce a particular note from a wind instrument.

b. to press down (a string of a violin, viola, etc.) in order to alter the pitch of the tone produced from it.

c. to produce (a particular note) by so doing.

v.i.

15. to come to a stand, as in a course or journey; halt.

16. to cease moving, proceeding, speaking, acting, operating, etc.; to pause; desist.

17. to cease; come to an end.

18. to halt for a brief visit (often fol. by at, in, or by): He is stopping at the best hotel in town.

19. stop by, to make a brief visit on one's way elsewhere: I'll stop by on my way home.

20. stop down, Photog. (on a camera) to reduce (the diaphragm opening of a lens).

21. stop in, to make a brief, incidental visit: If you're in town, be sure to stop in.

22. stop off, to halt for a brief stay at some point on the way elsewhere: On the way to Rome we stopped off at Florence.

23. stop out,

a. to mask (certain areas of an etching plate, photographic negative, etc.) with varnish, paper, or the like, to prevent their being etched, printed, etc.

b. to withdraw temporarily from school: Most of the students who stop out eventually return to get their degrees.

24. stop over, to stop briefly in the course of a journey: Many motorists were forced to stop over in that town because of floods.

n.

25. the act of stopping.

26. a cessation or arrest of movement, action, operation, etc.; end: The noise came to a stop. Put a stop to that behavior!

27. a stay or sojourn made at a place, as in the course of a journey: Above all, he enjoyed his stop in Trieste.

28. a place where trains or other vehicles halt to take on and discharge passengers: Is this a bus stop?

29. a closing or filling up, as of a hole.

30. a blocking or obstructing, as of a passage or channel.

31. a plug or other stopper for an opening.

32. an obstacle, impediment, or hindrance.

33. any piece or device that serves to check or control movement or action in a mechanism.

34. Archit. a feature terminating a molding or chamfer.

35. Com.

a. an order to refuse payment of a check.

b. See stop order.

36. Music.

a. the act of closing a fingerhole or pressing a string of an instrument in order to produce a particular note.

b. a device or contrivance, as on an instrument, for accomplishing this.

c. (in an organ) a graduated set of pipes of the same kind and giving tones of the same quality.

d. Also called stop knob. a knob or handle that is drawn out or pushed back to permit or prevent the sounding of such a set of pipes or to control some other part of the organ.

e. (in a reed organ) a group of reeds functioning like a pipe-organ stop.

37. Sports. an individual defensive play or act that prevents an opponent or opposing team from scoring, advancing, or gaining an advantage, as a catch in baseball, a tackle in football, or the deflection of a shot in hockey.

38. Naut. a piece of small line used to lash or fasten something, as a furled sail.

39. Phonet.

a. an articulation that interrupts the flow of air from the lungs.

b. a consonant sound characterized by stop articulation, as /p, b, t, d, k/ and /g/. Cf. continuant.

40. Photog. the diaphragm opening of a lens, esp. as indicated by an f- number.

41. Building Trades.

a. See stop bead.

b. doorstop (def. 2).

42. any of various marks used as punctuation at the end of a sentence, esp. a period.

43. the word "stop" printed in the body of a telegram or cablegram to indicate a period.

44. stops, (used with a sing. v.) a family of card games whose object is to play all of one's cards in a predetermined sequence before one's opponents.

45. Zool. a depression in the face of certain animals, esp. dogs, marking the division between the forehead and the projecting part of the muzzle. See diag. under dog.

46. pull out all the stops,

a. to use every means available.

b. to express, do, or carry out something without reservation.

[bef. 1000; ME stoppen (v.), OE -stoppian (in forstoppian to stop up); c. D, LG stoppen, G stopfen; all VL *stuppare to plug with oakum, deriv. of L stuppa coarse hemp or flax < Gk stýppe]

Syn. 3. STOP, ARREST, CHECK, HALT imply causing a cessation of movement or progress (literal or figurative). STOP is the general term for the idea: to stop a clock. ARREST usually refers to stopping by imposing a sudden and complete restraint: to arrest development. CHECK implies bringing about an abrupt, partial, or temporary stop: to check a trotting horse. To HALT means to make a temporary stop, esp. one resulting from a command: to halt a company of soldiers. 5. thwart, obstruct, impede. 16. quit. 26. halt; termination. 28. terminal. 33. governor.

Ant. 1-3. start.

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▪ music

      in music, on the organ, mechanism controlling the entry of air from the pressurized wind chest into a rank of pipes producing a distinctive tone colour. The word stop also denotes, by extension, the register, or rank of pipes, controlled by a stop. Stop also occasionally refers to mechanisms altering the tone colour of the strings of harpsichords and early pianos.

      The earliest organ stops used a slider system. Holes in a strip of wood set in a slider frame coincided with holes in the feet of the pipes of one register. By pushing a knob the organist could slide the holes slightly beyond the pipe feet, blocking entry of air into those pipes. An alternate method was introduced in the 20th century, with electrically operated valves controlling entry of air into the pipes.

      Each rank of pipes, such as the diapason, is controlled by a separate stop. Mutation stops consist of pipes sounding higher (e.g., by five notes) than the other pipes, rather than in unison with them. Used in combination with unison pipes they add an incisive quality to the sound. Mixture stops consist of two or more ranks of pipes, both unison and mutation ranks, controlled by a single stop.

▪ speech sound

also called  plosive 

      in phonetics, a consonant sound characterized by the momentary blocking (occlusion) of some part of the oral cavity. A completely articulated stop usually has three stages: the catch (implosion), or beginning of the blockage; the hold (occlusion); and the release (explosion), or opening of the air passage again. A stop differs from a fricative (q.v.) in that, with a stop, occlusion is total, rather than partial. Occlusion may occur at various places in the vocal tract from the glottis to the lips; stops are thus classified as to their place of articulation—glottal, velar, palatal, alveolar, dental, bilabial, etc. In English, b and p are bilabial stops, d and t are alveolar stops, g and k are velar stops. A stop for which there is no English letter is the glottal stop, which occurs in the Scottish, Cockney, and Brooklynese pronunciation of the tt in “bottle” (“bo'l”); in other tongues (e.g., Arabic) the glottal stop has a separate mark in the script.

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