mops

Pluralmopses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of mop.

   Two soaked mops leaned in the bucket beside the back door.

   The cleaning crew wrung out their mops at the end of the shift.

   Note

   This plural covers more than cleaning tools. Besides wet mops in a bucket and humorous mops of hair, it can name the hiring fairs of British West Midlands dialect, where servants were once engaged. It can also name the tassels, now obsolete, worn in a buttonhole to show one's trade at such fairs. In Multicultural London English slang, mops are firearms, especially ones with a large magazine. The pug is a separate word with its own plural, mopses.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of mop.

   She mops the spilled coffee before it spreads across the tile.

   Each morning the porter mops the marble lobby until it shines.

   Note

   The same -s form serves every verb spelled mop, so the rest of the sentence has to separate them. Most often it is the transitive cleaning verb, which takes an object (she mops the floor) and stretches to anything wiped as if with a mop. In US slang the same form can mean shoplifts. With no object at all, it describes pulling a wry face. The plural noun has the same spelling, and an article or number usually marks it.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A pug; a small, stocky dog with a wrinkled flat face, short muzzle and curled tail.

   Her favorite mops dozed on a velvet cushion through the entire afternoon.

   The old gentleman walked his snorting mops slowly around the square each morning.

   Similarpug

   Note

   This word was borrowed from German Mops ("pug"), which comes from Dutch mops. It is unrelated to the plural of the cleaning tool, even though the two are spelled the same. Here the final -s belongs to the stem, not to a plural ending. One pug is a mops, and two are mopses. So "a mops dozing on a cushion" means a single dog, while "two mops" means cleaning tools.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3