hopping

Pluralhoppings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of hop.

   He spent one restless summer hopping freight trains from Chicago to Denver.

   Hopping over the creek on wet stones takes better balance than it looks.

   Note

   The doubled p keeps it apart from hoping, the -ing form of hope, and dropping it changes the sentence. After be it builds progressive tenses (the rabbit was hopping). With an object it can mean boarding a train or bus you do not drive, often on the sly, and for moving often between similar places it usually sits inside compounds.

2. 2
   adjectiveslangUS

   Of a place, crowded with people.

   By ten o'clock the bar was hopping, and we couldn't get near the counter.

   Downtown gets hopping during the street festival, so plan to park early.

   Similarbusy, packed, buzzing, lively, jumping

   Oppositeempty, quiet, dead

   Note

   Nightlife slang from American English, at home in casual talk about a bar, a street or a party rather than in formal writing. It sits most naturally after be or get (the club was hopping; things get hopping after ten). In a report or an essay, crowded or busy says the same thing without the slang.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of moving in hops, or any lively jumping, frisking, or dancing about.

   The steady hopping of sparrows on the tin roof woke her before dawn.

   After an hour of hopping and twirling at the barn dance, the kids collapsed on the grass.

   Similarjumping, skipping, bouncing

4. 4
   adjective

   Moving from place to place by a series of hops.

   The lab's hopping robot bounces across rough ground that would trap a wheeled rover.

   Grasshoppers and other hopping insects can escape a predator in a single leap.

   Similarjumping

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The adding of hops to beer during brewing to flavor it.

   The pale ale owes its citrusy aroma to generous hopping late in the boil.

   The brewery cut back on the hopping so its lager would taste smoother.

6. 6
   nounBritishcountable or uncountable

   The picking of hops; for Londoners, a working holiday spent in the hop gardens of Kent.

   Half the street packed up and went down to Kent for the hopping.

   The farm took on dozens of extra hands for the hopping, most of them families from London.

   Note

   A British word from the farm end of the hop trade, and a reminder that two unrelated words share this spelling: this one comes from the plant, not from jumping. For Londoners it named the trip as much as the work, a working holiday in the Kent hop gardens, and Alan Bignell's Hopping Down in Kent (1977) takes its title from that tradition.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A shift by an electron in an atom from one energy state to another.

   The glow of the gas comes from the hopping of electrons down to lower energy states.

   The simulation tracks electron hopping between the two lowest energy states of the atom.

   Note

   Physicists borrow the everyday verb because the electron does not slide between states; it moves straight from one allowed energy level to another. A hop downward gives energy off, often as the light a glowing gas shows; a hop upward needs energy taken in from outside.

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