mopped

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of mop.

   The custodian mopped the long hallway before the building opened.

   By midnight the volunteers had mopped every corridor in the shelter.

   Note

   The doubled p is the regular spelling rule at work: a single final consonant after a short vowel doubles before -ed, so mop gives mopped. One form serves both the past (she mopped the floor) and the participle (the floor was mopped). It carries every verb sense of mop, including the intransitive wry face and the US slang for shoplifting. It also shares its spelling with the humorous 'haired' adjective.

2. 2
   adjectivehumorousin compounds

   Having thick, shaggy hair that resembles the head of a mop.

   A mopped art student slouched at the back of the lecture hall.

   The mopped sheepdog bounded across the lawn, fur flying everywhere.

   Similarshaggy, tousled

   Note

   A joking word that lives in compounds: long-mopped, blonde-mopped, brown-mopped. The first element gives the length or color, and the whole is hyphenated before its noun. It borrows the humorous noun mop for a dense head of hair, so it suits playful, vivid description rather than neutral reporting. Sean Madigan Hoen's Songs Only You Know (2014) sketches a friend as "tall, dapper, brown-mopped Will."

   A curly-mopped toddler peered over the back of the seat.

   The long-mopped guitarist shook his hair out of his eyes.

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