Other forms: drooping, drooped, droops
To droop is to hang down limply through weakness. Flowers drooping, drooping eyelids, his head drooped.
It is caused by loss of support rather than by design, which is why it reads as tiredness or thirst — a drooping plant needs water and drooping eyelids need sleep. Note drip and drop, which come from the same Norse root about falling water, and drowsy, which is probably related.
1verbdroopTo hang down limply through weakness.
“By midnight the tired child's head began to droop onto her chest.”
droop is a hanging down.
Old Norse drupa means to droop, from a root meaning to drip or fall. Drip and drop come from the same falling.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰrewb- — to drip, drop
Proto-Germanic
*drūpaną
Old Norse
drúpa — to droop
Middle English
droupen
English, today
droop
Built from
Middle English droupen, from Old Norse drúpa (“to droop”), from Proto-Germanic drūpaną, drupōną (“to hang down, drip, drop”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰrewb- (“to drip, drop”). a doublet of drip and drop.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA