hoop

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A circular band of metal or wood put around a cask or barrel to bind the staves together.
2. n. A large wooden, plastic, or metal ring, especially one used as a plaything or for trained animals to jump through.
3. n. One of the lightweight circular supports for a hoop skirt.
4. n. A circular, ringlike earring.
5. n. One of a pair of circular wooden or metal frames used to hold material taut for embroidery or similar needlework.
6. n. Basketball The basket.
7. n. Basketball A field goal: hit a big hoop.
8. n. Basketball The game of basketball.
9. n. Sports A croquet wicket.
10. v. To hold together or support with or as if with a hoop.
11. v. To encircle.
12. idiom. jump To undergo a rigorous trial or examination.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A circular band or flattened ring of wood, metal, or other material; especially, a band of wood or metal used to confine the staves of casks, tubs, etc., or for any similar purpose; also, that part of a finger-ring which surrounds the finger, as distinguished from the chaton.
2. n. A large ring of wood or iron for a child to trundle.
3. n. A circular band of stiff material serving to expand the skirt of a woman's dress: often used, either in the singular or in the plural, for the skirt itself so expanded. The hoop or hoopskirt was evolved from the farthingale of the sixteenth century. (See farthingale.) The time of its greatest extravagance was the middle of the eighteenth century, when the bell-shaped skirt was expanded to enormous dimensions by hoops. At a later time the hoop consisted of two separate structures, one over each hip, the two being held together by a girdle. The use of hoops continued with some intermissions till about 1820. About 1852 skirts began to be expanded again by the use of crinoline petticoats (see crinoline), for which were afterward substituted underskirts (called hoop-skirts) with a series of hoops, at first of ratan and whalebone and afterward of fiat flexible steel, which at times were nearly as large as those of a century earlier. They went out of use again about 1870.
4. n. Something resembling a hoop; anything circular: technically applied in botany to the overlapping edge of one of the valves of the frustule of the Diatomaceæ.
5. n. A certain quantity of drink, up to the first hoop on a quart pot (which was formerly bound with hoops like a barrel).
6. n. An old English measure of capacity, variously estimated at from 1 to 4 pecks.
7. n. The casing inclosing a pair of millstones; also, a reinforcing band about one of the stones.
8. To bind or fasten with a hoop or with hoops; provide with a hoop: as, to hoop a barrel or puncheon.
9. To clasp; encircle; surround.
10. n. Same as whoop.
11. n. Same as hoopoe.
12. n. A bullfinch.

Wiktionary

1. n. A circular band of metal used to bind a barrel.
2. n. plural The game of basketball.
3. n. A hoop earring.
4. v. To fasten using a hoop.
5. n. A shout; a whoop, as in whooping cough.
6. n. The hoopoe.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A pliant strip of wood or metal bent in a circular form, and united at the ends, for holding together the staves of casks, tubs, etc.
2. n. A ring; a circular band; anything resembling a hoop, as the cylinder (cheese hoop) in which the curd is pressed in making cheese.
3. n. A circle, or combination of circles, of thin whalebone, metal, or other elastic material, used for expanding the skirts of ladies' dresses; crinoline; -- used chiefly in the plural.
4. n. obsolete A quart pot; -- so called because originally bound with hoops, like a barrel. Also, a portion of the contents measured by the distance between the hoops.
5. n. engraving An old measure of capacity, variously estimated at from one to four pecks.
6. v. To bind or fasten with hoops.
7. v. To clasp; to encircle; to surround.
8. v. To utter a loud cry, or a sound imitative of the word, by way of call or pursuit; to shout.
9. v. To whoop, as in whooping cough. See Whoop.
10. v. To drive or follow with a shout.
11. v. To call by a shout or peculiar cry.
12. n. A shout; a whoop, as in whooping cough.
13. n. (Zoöl.) The hoopoe. See Hoopoe.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. horizontal circular metal hoop supporting a net through which players try to throw the basketball
2. n. a light curved skeleton to spread out a skirt
3. n. a small arch used as croquet equipment
4. v. bind or fasten with a hoop
5. n. a rigid circular band of metal or wood or other material used for holding or fastening or hanging or pulling