stop

Stop is what you do when you quit moving, or quit doing. The bus stops at the corner, the rain stops, the music stops and everyone looks up.

Stop is also a noun: a bus stop, a stop on the way north, a car coming to a stop. Watch the two patterns after it, because they mean opposite things — stop eating means you finish your meal, stop to eat means you break off whatever you were doing so that you can eat. The older, physical sense of blocking is still alive: you stop a leak, stop a gap, stop your ears. It doubles the p in stopped and stopping. And there is a family of short phrasal verbs around it: stop by a friend's flat, stop off in Lyon, stop out late.

Phrases it lives in

• stop dead — to halt instantly and completely, usually out of shock
• put a stop to something — to bring an unwanted thing to an end
• stop at nothing — to be willing to do anything, however extreme, to get what you want
• pull out all the stops — to make every possible effort