1. A gambling card game in which chips are placed on the ace and king and queen and jack of separate suits (taken from a separate deck); a player plays the lowest card of a suit in their hand and successively higher cards are played until the sequence stops; the player who plays a card matching one in the layout wins all the chips on that card
   "They spent the evening playing stops with their neighbours";
   - Michigan, Chicago, Newmarket, boodle

1. The event of something ending
   "it came to a stop at the bottom of the hill";
   - halt
    
2. The act of stopping something
   "the third baseman made some remarkable stops";
   - stoppage
    
3. A spot where something halts or pauses
   "his next stop is Atlanta"
    
4. A brief stay in the course of a journey
   "they made a stop to visit their friends";
   - stopover, layover
    
5. The state of inactivity following an interruption
   "he spent the entire stop in his seat";
   - arrest, check, halt, hitch, stay, stoppage
    
6. A consonant produced by stopping the flow of air at some point and suddenly releasing it
   "his stop consonants are too aspirated";
   - stop consonant, occlusive, plosive consonant, plosive speech sound, plosive
    
7. A punctuation mark (‘.’) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop or after abbreviations
   "In British English, 'full stop' is used instead of 'period'";
   - period, point, full stop, full point [Brit, rare]
    
8. (music) a knob on an organ that is pulled to change the sound quality from the organ pipes
   "the organist pulled out all the stops"
    
9. A mechanical device in a camera that controls size of aperture of the lens
   "the new cameras adjust the stop automatically";
   - diaphragm
    
10. A restraint that checks the motion of something
    "he used a book as a stop to hold the door open";
    - catch

1. Come to a halt, cease moving
   "the car stopped"; "She stopped in front of a store window";
   - halt
    
2. Put an end to a state or an activity
   "stop teasing your little brother";
   - discontinue, cease, give up, quit, lay off, break, break off, surcease [archaic]
    
3. Cause to end
   "stop a car"; "stop the thief"
    
4. Prevent from happening or developing
   "stop the process";
   - halt, block, kibosh [informal], kybosh [informal]
    
5. Interrupt a trip
   "we stopped at Aunt Mary's house"; "they stopped for three days in Florence"; "we stopped over at Aunt Mary's house";
   - stop over
    
6. Hold back, as of a danger or an enemy; check the expansion or influence of
   "stop the growth of communism in South East Asia";
   - check, turn back, arrest, contain, hold back
    
7. Seize on its way
   "The police stopped the suspicious package before it reached its destination";
   - intercept
    
8. Have an end, in a temporal, spatial, or quantitative sense; either spatial or metaphorical
   "Your rights stop where you infringe upon the rights of other";
   - end, finish, terminate, cease
    
9. Render unsuitable for passage
   "stop the busy road";
   - barricade, block, blockade, block off, block up, bar
    
10. Stop and wait, as if awaiting further instructions or developments
    "stop a moment!";
    - hold on

See also: keep

Type of: act, alter, block, break, card game, cards, catch, change, close up, conclusion, constraint, cut off, deed, defend, disrupt, end, ending, finish, forbid, foreclose, forestall, grab, human action, human activity, impede, inaction, inactiveness, inactivity, interrupt, jam, knob, mechanical device, modify, obstruct, obstruent, obturate, occlude, place, preclude, prevent, punctuation, punctuation mark [Brit], restraint, spot, stay, terminate, topographic point, vary

Antonym: begin, start

Part of: camera, organ, photographic camera, pipe organ

Encyclopedia: Stops