Other forms: nooses
A noose is a loop of rope that tightens when pulled. The knot slides, so the loop only ever gets smaller.
The sliding knot is the whole mechanism and it has practical uses in climbing and in catching animals. The word is dominated by one association, since a hangman's noose is what most people picture, and in America the image carries a specific and violent racial history that makes displaying one a criminal offence in several states. The figurative sense is about pressure tightening.
1nounnooseA loop of rope with a knot that tightens when pulled.
“He tied a noose in the end of the rope to secure the load.”
The origin is uncertain, and the likeliest guess is a knot. Old French and Old Occitan nou meant a knot, and the word would then have slid from the knot itself to the loop it makes.
Old Occitan
nous
Old French
nos
Middle English
nose — noose, loop
English, today
noose
Built from
From Middle English nose (“noose, loop”), of unknown origin. Possibly from Old French nos or Old Occitan nous, nos, nominative singular or accusative plural of nou (“knot”), with a required change in meaning shifting from the "knot" itself to the "loop" created by the knot. If so, then cognate with French nœud (“knot”), Portuguese nó (“knot”) and Spanish nudo (“knot”). Compare node and knot. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, borrowed from Middle Low German nȫse (“loop, noose, snare”), itself of unknown. Perhaps derived from an incorrect division of ēn' ȫse literally “a loop”, from Middle Low German ȫse, from Old Saxon ōsia, from Proto-West Germanic ansiju (“eyelet, loop”). Compare also stq Noose, Nouze (“loop, eyelet”) and stq Oose (“eyelet, loop”), potentially created via the same process.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA