Hoop

How to spell hoop

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hoop

What does hoop mean?

1. nounA rigid circular band or ring, used as a toy, a support, or part of a frame.

Hoop in a sentence

• The child rolled a wooden hoop along the garden path.

• Each barrel was held together by a metal hoop around the staves.

Where does hoop come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hoop traces back to the Old English word hop, which named a circular band of wood or metal, and it belongs to a wider family of related forms across the Low Countries, including the Middle Dutch hoep, all carrying the basic sense of a ring or encircling band. The shared Germanic root described something bent round into a circle, which is exactly the meaning the word still keeps today. For centuries hoops were the bands that held the staves of barrels and casks tightly together, so the word was firmly tied to everyday craft work before it ever became associated with games or basketball. The doubled vowel in the modern spelling simply marks the long 'oo' sound, and because the word is short and phonetic it has stayed remarkably stable over the centuries. Its close relatives in modern Dutch and German still mean much the same thing, a reminder of the word's homely Germanic origins.

How the word is built

• hoop (single Germanic root meaning a circular band); no prefix or suffix