Skip to content
OneKitly

hop

nounverbnounverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//hɒp//
  • Canada//hɑp//
  • Australia//hɔp//

A short jump.

noun

  1. 1

    A short jump.

    The frog crossed the brook in three or four hops.

  2. 2

    A jump on one leg.

  3. 3

    A short journey, especially in the case of air travel, one that takes place on a private plane.

    My fellow passengers are a mixture of people returning from a day out in the capital, locals doing short hops, and a few (like me) heading farther afield.

  4. 4

    figurativeA brief period of development or progress.

    For popular radio stars in New York and Los Angeles, it was a short hop to network television.

  5. 5

    A bounce, especially from the ground, of a thrown or batted ball.

  6. 6

    datedA dance; a gathering for the purpose of dancing.

    1896, Benjamin Brierley, James Dronsfield, "Ab-o'th'-Yate" Sketches and Other Short Stories One singing-room we had closed, and so damaged a "twopenny hop" that it could not have survived another season had our own prosperity continued unchecked.

  7. 7

    The sending of a data packet from one host to an adjacent host as part of its overall journey.

Etymology

From Middle English hoppen, from Old English hoppian (“to hop, spring, leap, dance”), from Proto-West Germanic *huppōn, from Proto-Germanic *huppōną (“to hop”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewb- (“to bend, bow”). Cognate with Dutch hoppen (“to hop”), German hopfen, hoppen (“to hop”), Danish hoppe (“to hop, leap, jump”), Swedish hoppa (“to hop, leap, jump”), Icelandic hoppa (“to hop, skip”).

verb

  1. 1

    To jump a short distance.

    When it had advanced from the wood, it hopped much after the fashion of a kangaroo, using its hind feet and tail to propel it, and when it stood erect, it sat upon its tail.

  2. 2

    To jump on one foot.

  3. 3

    To be in state of energetic activity.

    Sorry, can't chat. Got to hop.

    The sudden rush of customers had everyone in the shop hopping.

  4. 4

    To suddenly take a mode of transportation that one does not drive oneself, often surreptitiously.

    I hopped a plane over here as soon as I heard the news.

    He was trying to hop a ride in an empty trailer headed north.

    He hopped a train to California.

  5. 5

    To jump onto, or over

    They hop the curb and cut their engines.

    As the 1857 to Manchester Piccadilly rolls in, I scan the windows and realise there are plenty of spare seats, so I hop aboard. The train is a '221'+'220' combo to allow for social distancing - a luxury on an XC train as normally you're playing sardines, so I make the most of it.

  6. 6

    To move frequently from one place or situation to another similar one.

    We were party-hopping all weekend.

    bar-hopping

    We had to island-hop on the weekly seaplane to get to his hideaway.

  7. 7

    informalTo go in a quick or sudden manner.

    We hopped on the freeway heading to LA and I looked over at the dashboard and saw the needle back on “E” and I told the guy, “Hey! You going to make it with the gas you got?"

    Juliet shook her head as she hopped on the computer and greeted a customer who ambled in, blowing on her still wet nails.

    Spangler hopped up from the control panel and stretched, pressing his hands to his lower back.

    She hopped on the computer and typed away, going back and forth between Mark's fake I.D., the deposit slip and the computer screen.

  8. 8

    informalTo dance.

  9. 9

    obsoleteTo walk lame; to limp.

    The limping smith […]hopping here and there, himself a jest[…]

noun

  1. 1

    A plant of species Humulus lupulus, native to northern Europe, female flowers of which are used to flavour many types of beer during brewing.

  2. 2

    The flowers of the hop plant, dried and used to brew beer.

  3. 3

    slangOpium, or some other narcotic drug.

    ‘You've been shot full of hop and kept under it until you're as crazy as two waltzing mice.’

  4. 4

    The fruit of the dog rose; a hip.

Etymology

From Middle English hoppe, from Middle Dutch hoppe, from Old Dutch *hoppo, from Proto-Germanic *huppô, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keup (“tuft, hair of the head”), referring to the plant's appearance. Cognate with German Hopfen and French houblon.

verb

  1. 1

    To impregnate with hops, especially to add hops as a flavouring agent during the production of beer

    If you brew in March or October, and have hopped it for long keeping[…]

  2. 2

    To gather hops.

noun

  1. 1

    Synonym of half-op.

Forms

plural
hops
past tense
hopped
past participle
hopped
present participle
hopping
third person singular
hops
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).