Also 6–7 stoupe, stoope, 7 (? erron.) stop(pe. [f. STOOP v.1]
1. An act of stooping; a bending of the body forwards; a bow.
1571. Campion, Hist. Irel. (1633), 69. The Generall also himselfe, digging with a pykeaxe, a desperate villaine … watched his stoope, and clove his head with an axe.
1603. B. Jonson, Sejanus, I. (1605), B 3. Cor. Here comes Seianus. Sil. Now obserue the stoupes, The bendings, and the falls. Arr. Most creeping base!
1668. Dryden, Even. Love, Epil. 14. Up starts a Mounsieur, new come o’er, and warm In the French stoop, and the pull-back o’ th’ Arm.
1760. C. Johnston, Chrysal (1822), I. 263. Some unlucky stoop burst the string that tied his breeches.
1833. Chalmers, in Hanna, Mem. (1851), III. 370. A passage often narrow and requiring a very low stoop.
1885. Spectator, 25 July, 977/2. His trick was done by a peculiar method of stooping, and of concealing the stoop behind a skirt.
transf. 1684. R. Waller, Nat. Exper., 130. The Amber being hung at liberty by a thread in the Air,… when it was rubb’d and heated, made a stoop to those little Bodies, which likewise proportionally presented themselves thereto, and readily obey’d its call.
b. fig. A condescension, a voluntary descent from superiority or dignity.
1636. Shirley, Duke’s Mistr., III. i. (1638), E 2 b. Have you obteyn’d so much As one stoope to your wanton avarice, One bend to please your inflam’d appetite?
1681. Dryden, Span. Friar, IV. ii. Can I, can any Loyal Subject see With Patience, such a Stoop from Sovereignty?
1842. J. Sherman, in Allon, Mem. (1863), 294. To give us a claim to all His perfections … is such a stoop of the Divine Majesty as exceeds the utmost stretch of human imagination.
1856. Spurgeon, Serm. N. Park St. Pulpit, 720. It would have been a stoop more immense than if a seraph should have changed himself into an emmet.
1890. Spectator, 22 Nov., 742/1. She certainly ‘stoops to deceit’ often enough for the stoop to leave a very vivid impression on the reader’s mind.
† c. To give the stoop: to bow; fig. to yield, give way. Obs.
1623. B. Jonson, Time Vind. (1640), 94. T’ have giv’n the stoop, and to salute the skirts Of her, to whom all Ladies else are flirts!
a. 1670. Hacket, Abp. Williams, II. (1693), 186. O that a King should give the stoop to such as these?
2. A stooping attitude; a temporary or permanent bent position of the back or shoulders.
1716. Lady M. W. Montagu, Lett. to Lady Rich, 20 Sept. I can assure you that … a small stoop in the shoulders, nay, even gray hairs, are no objection.
1825. Lond. Med. & Phys. Jrnl., LIV. 210. On the Means generally used with the intention of curing a Stoop.
1862. Miss Braddon, Lady Audley, x. The lazy horses … dropping their heads with a weary stoop under the afternoon sunshine.
1863. Geo. Eliot, Romola, v. His tall spare frame had the student’s stoop of the shoulders.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VIII. 77. Associated with the forward stoop is a tendency to take quick steps.
1904. A. C. Benson, House of Quiet, xix. (1907), 115. He was a tall thin man, with a slight stoop.
† 3. Descent, declivity (of a mountain); a downward slope or incline. Obs.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. x. § 7. As he was entring into Savoy, at the stoope, or descent of the Alpes, very many of the … Peeres of England met him.
1711. Milit. & Sea Dict. (ed. 4), s.v. Chemise, When the Soil was sandy and loose; and therefore could not support it self, without allowing it too great a Talus, or Stoop.
b. dial. (See quot.)
1854. Miss Baker, Northampt. Gloss., Stoop, a fall of water in a river.
4. The action of descending from a height; spec. the swoop of a bird of prey on its quarry, or the descent of a falcon to the lure. Also fig.
c. 1586. C’tess Pembroke, Ps. CXIX. Q. i. Lett not these that soare to high By my low stoope, yet higher fly.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, III. (1598), 261 (Amphialus’ Dream 56). More swift then falcons stoope to feeding Falconers call.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XXIII. 91. Like matter vaporous The spirit vanisht vnder earth, and murmur’d in his stoope.
a. 1616. Beaum. & Fl., Wit without M., IV. i. (1639), G 4. How daintily she [the lady] flies upon the lure, and cunningly she makes her stoppes.
1645. Waller, To Mutable Fair, 16, Poems 120. Now will I wander through the ayre, Mount, make a stoope at every Fayre.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., VI. 48. Some water-fowls subsist by making sudden stoops from above, to seize whatever fish come near the surface.
1823. Byron, Age of Bronze, vii. Vulture-plumed guerrillas, on the stoop For their incessant prey.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., iii. (1879), 54. Its stoop … is very inferior in force and rapidity to that of a hawk.
1885–94. R. Bridges, Eros & Psyche, Nov., 12. As an eagle … checks his headlong stoop With wide-flung wing.
1891. Harting, Bibl. Accipitr., 230. Stoop, the swift descent of a falcon on the quarry from a height.
5. Comb.: stoop-necked a., having the neck bent downwards; stoop-shouldered a., having a stoop in the shoulders.
1773. Pennsylv. Gaz., 7 July, 3/3. Run away from the subscriber, an English servant girl,… about 20 years of age, a little stoop shouldered.
1887. C. G. D. Roberts, Poems (1903), 56. Black on the ridge, against that lovely flush, A cart, and stoop-necked oxen.
1899. Royal Mag., Feb., 384/1. An old woman of seventy, thin, stoop-shouldered—from long years of bending over her cobbler’s bench.
