stop

Etymology 1

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. Alternate 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

1. (intransitive) To cease moving.
   I stopped at the traffic lights.
2. (intransitive) Not to 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.
   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? 2013-06-01, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly)
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. (causative, transitive, chiefly UK) To end someone else's activity.
   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. (transitive) To close or block an opening.
   He stopped the wound with gauze.
8. (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.
9. (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 1887, R. D. Blackmore, Springhaven
   She’s not going away. She’s going to stop here forever. 1931, E. F. Benson, chapter 7, in Mapp & Lucia
10. (music) To regulate the sounds of (musical strings, etc.) by pressing them against the fingerboard with the finger, or otherwise shortening the vibrating part.
11. (obsolete) To punctuate.
12. (nautical) To make fast; to stopper.
13. (phonetics, transitive) To pronounce (a phoneme) as a stop.
    th-stopping
14. (finance, transitive) To 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

noun

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.
   It is […] doubtful […] whether it contributed anything to the stop of the infection. 1722, Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year
3. That which stops, impedes, or obstructs; an obstacle; an impediment.
   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
   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.
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. (soccer) A 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. May 15 2021, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 0-1 Leicester”, in BBC Sport
11. (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.
12. (photography) A part of a photographic system that reduces the amount of light.
13. (photography) A unit of exposure corresponding to a doubling of the brightness of an image.
14. (photography) An f-stop.
15. The diaphragm used in optical instruments to cut off the marginal portions of a beam of light passing through lenses.
16. (fencing) A coup d'arret, or stop thrust.

Etymology 2

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. Cognates Cognate with Norwegian stopp, stoppa (“deep well, recess”), Middle High German stubech, stübich (“barrel, vat, unit of measure”) (German Stübchen). Related also to Middle Low German stōp (“beaker, flask”), Middle High German stouf (“beaker, flask”), Norwegian staupa (“goblet”), Icelandic staupa (“shot-glass”), Old English stēap (“a stoup, beaker, drinking vessel, cup, flagon”). Cognate to Albanian shtambë (“amphora, bucket”).

noun

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

Etymology 3

s- + top

noun

1. (physics) The 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 √=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector”, in arXiv