loop

UK/luːp/US/luːp/

nounB24 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,116 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: loops, looping, looped

A loop is a line that curves round and comes back to itself — a ring of rope, wire or string with no end to find. The loop in a shoelace, the loop of a belt, the loops of a hose coiled on the garage wall.

Anything that repeats and returns to its start runs in a loop: a film on a loop in a shop window, a song on a loop, an argument going round in a loop. Programmers took the noun for exactly that, a piece of code that runs again and again until something changes. As a verb, you loop a rope round a post and a road loops back to the village. Then there is being in the loop, which is being one of the people who get told things, and being out of the loop, which is where most of us live.

Definitions of loop

1nounringA curve of rope, wire or line that bends round and crosses itself.B2~56%
“He tied the rope in a loop and threw it over the post.”
synonyms: ring, coil
2nounstartsSomething that starts again from the beginning as soon as it ends.B2~29%
“The video runs on a loop all day.”
3nounloopIn computing, a piece of code that repeats until a condition changes.B2~7%
“The loop keeps running until the file is empty.”
4verbcurveTo make a loop, or to curve round and come back.B2~8%
“The road loops back to the village.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 181 sentences found in the wild and placed 119 of them on a sense (62 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

loop is a shape.

Phrases it lives in

in the loop — among the people who are kept informed
out of the loop — left out of what everyone else is being told

Where it comes from

A loop began as a knot that runs. Middle English had lowpknot, a loop-knot, and the loop half comes from Old Norse hlaup, a run, from hlaupa, to leap. The knot ran, and the word is still running: loop and leap are the same family.

Proto-Germanic
*hlaupaną — to leap, run
Old Norse
hlaup — a run
Middle English
loupe — noose, loop
English, today
loop

Built from

lowpknot · Middle English — loop-knot
hlaupa · Old Norse — to leap

From Middle English loupe (“noose, loop”), earlier lowpknot (“loop-knot”), of gmq origin, from Old Norse hlaup (“a run”), used in the sense of a "running knot", from hlaupa (“to leap”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic hlaupaną (“to leap, run”). Compare Swedish löpknut (“loop-knot”), Danish løbknude (“a running knot”), Danish løb (“a course”). More at leap. The verb is derived from the noun.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Computing & Code, Light & Shadow, Shapes & Lines

First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

loop in the wild

In music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material.
Loop (music)
Royalty-free loops can be purchased and downloaded for music creation from companies like The Loop Loft, Native Instruments, Splice and Output.
Loop (music)
Mathematically, positive feedback is defined as a positive loop gain around a closed loop of cause and effect.
Positive feedback
The OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act loop) is a decision-making model developed by United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd in the early 1970s.
OODA loop
The loop includes continuous collection of feedback and observations.
OODA loop

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the hlaupa family

loop

loop — used about once every 493 pages · #3,116 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of loop

1nounringA curve of rope, wire or line that bends round and crosses itself.B2~56%

“He tied the rope in a loop and threw it over the post.”

synonyms: ring, coil

2nounstartsSomething that starts again from the beginning as soon as it ends.B2~29%

“The video runs on a loop all day.”

3nounloopIn computing, a piece of code that repeats until a condition changes.B2~7%

“The loop keeps running until the file is empty.”

4verbcurveTo make a loop, or to curve round and come back.B2~8%

“The road loops back to the village.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 181 sentences found in the wild and placed 119 of them on a sense (62 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

loop is a shape.