To hoover is to clean a floor with a suction machine. Hoover the carpet, do the hoovering, get the hoover out.
It is a British generic verb from a trade mark, like biro and sellotape, and the machine is a hoover whatever the brand. Vacuum and vacuum cleaner are the neutral terms and the American ones. Hoover up is used figuratively for taking up everything available: hoovered up all the votes. Note that the Hoover Company objected to the genericisation for decades and lost, which is what happens to a successful brand name.
1verbhooverTo clean a floor with a suction machine.
“Somebody hoovers that hall about twice a week.”
2nounvacuumA vacuum cleaner.
“The hoover has been broken since about March.”
hoover is a cleaning machine or action.
The word comes from the Hoover Company, named after William Hoover, who bought the patent for an early vacuum cleaner in 1908. He did not invent it and his name is on every carpet in Britain.
A of Hoover, the brand name of one of the first vacuum cleaners, which was sold by The Hoover Company. The American company was founded by named after William Henry Hoover and his son named after Herbert William Hoover, Sr.. The surname Hoover is an Anglicized version of the Huber, originally designating a landowner or a prosperous small-scale farmer.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Cleaning & Housework