Other forms: stoops, stooped, stooping
To stoop is to lean forward and down. Through a low doorway, or to pick something up.
It also describes a permanent posture, so somebody who walks with a stoop has a rounded back, and the noun is used that way. The figurative sense is moral and always negative, since stooping to something means lowering yourself to do it, and I would not stoop to that is a claim about character. American English has a separate noun, since a stoop is the front steps of a house.
1verbstoopTo bend the head and shoulders forward and down.
“He had to stoop to get through the door.”
2verblowerTo lower your standards in order to do something.
“She would never stoop to reading his messages.”
Also accepted in games: bend
Stoop and steep lean the same way. Old English stūpian meant to bow or bend, from a Germanic root about pushing and jutting, so a bent back and a sharp slope are described by one idea.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)tewb- — to push, butt, knock
Proto-Germanic
*stūpōną
Proto-West Germanic
*stūpōn
Old English
stūpian — to bow, bend
Middle English
stoupen
English, today
stoop
Built from
From Middle English stoupen, from Old English stūpian (“to bow, bend”), from Proto-West Germanic stūpōn, from Proto-Germanic stūpōną, stūpijaną (“to stand out”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)tewb- (“to push, butt, knock”). Compare steep. Cognate with Dutch stuipen (“to bend the upper part of the body forward and downward”), Old Norse stúpa (“to stoop”). Related also to Old Frisian stēpa (“to help”), Old Norse steypa (“to cause to stoop, cast down, overthrow”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA