droop
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L22919 on Wikidata ↗verb
- hang downward
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈdɹuːp/ / [ˈdɹʊu̯p]
adj
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English droupen, from Old Norse drúpa (“to droop”), from Proto-Germanic *drūpaną, *drupōną (“to hang down, drip, drop”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewb- (“to drip, drop”). Doublet of drip and drop.
- Drooping; adroop.
“But when the melancholy fit shall fall / Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, / That fosters the droop-headed flowers all. / And hides the green hill in an April shroud :”
noun
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English droupen, from Old Norse drúpa (“to droop”), from Proto-Germanic *drūpaną, *drupōną (“to hang down, drip, drop”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewb- (“to drip, drop”). Doublet of drip and drop.
- Something which is limp or sagging.
- A condition or posture of drooping.
“He walked with a discouraged droop.”
- A hinged portion of the leading edge of an aeroplane's wing, which swivels downward to increase lift during takeoff and landing.
verb
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English droupen, from Old Norse drúpa (“to droop”), from Proto-Germanic *drūpaną, *drupōną (“to hang down, drip, drop”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrewb- (“to drip, drop”). Doublet of drip and drop.
- To hang downward; to sag.
“On the brown harvest tree / Droops the red cherry.”
“Long before Shap platform showed up around a corner and the two arms on the gradient post drooped in both directions at once, Duchess of Buccleuch's amiable throbbing purr at the stack [funnel, chimney] had become a fierce freight-engine bark, as she resolutely dragged at her enormous load.”
- To slowly become limp; to bend gradually.
“Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; / While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
“The Grapes that on it hung were black, and all / The Vines supported and from drooping staid / With silver Props, that down they could not fall […]”
- To lose all energy, enthusiasm or happiness; to flag.
“But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?”
“Amidst the peaceful Triumphs of his Reign, / What wonder if the kindly beams he shed / Reviv’d the drooping Arts again […]”
- To allow to droop or sink.
“[…] pithless arms, like to a wither’d vine / That droops his sapless branches to the ground;”
“1892, Arthur Christopher Benson, “Knapweed” in Le Cahier Jaune: Poems, Eton: privately printed, p. 62, Down in the mire he droops his head; Forgotten, not forgiven.”
- To proceed downward, or toward a close; to decline.
“[…] let us forth, / I never from thy side henceforth to stray, / Wherere our days work lies, though now enjoind / Laborious, till day droop […]”
“[…] and now when day / Droop’d, and the chapel tinkled, mixt with those / Six hundred maidens clad in purest white […]”