cloop

/kluːp/US/klup/

cloop noun: a slightly hollow, percussive sound.

Noun (1)

cloop (plural cloops)

A slightly hollow, percussive sound.
- Yet no sooner was she departed than he sorely missed the clatter of her pattens, the cloop of her pails, the noise of her industrious broom sweeping assiduously in passages where there had been no footsteps to carry dirt.1872, [Mary Elizabeth] Braddon, “‘Then fell upon the House a sudden Gloom’”, in To the Bitter End […], volume III, London: John Maxwell and Co. […], →OCLC, page 90
- At the corner of Dover Street there lay a heap of mud and street sweepings, and as we drew up just opposite, blocked by an opposing tide of carriages in Piccadilly, a small, very dapper little gentleman in dress-clothes stepped into the middle of this muck-heap, with the result that one of his...1903, E[dward] F[rederic] Benson, “January”, in The Book of Months, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 7
1. The sound made when a cork is forcibly drawn from a bottle.
  - […] I prefer Sherry to Marsala when I can get it, and the latter was the wine of which I have no doubt I heard the "cloop" just before dinner.1846 February 28 – 1847 February 27, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “A Visit to Some Country Snobs”, in The Book of Snobs, London: Punch Office, […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 92
  - He can imitate […] any saw, cock, cloop of a cork wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter afterwards, bee buzzing, little boy up a chimney, &c.1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], “At Mrs. Ridley’s”, in The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], →OCLC, page 120
2. The sound made by the movement of liquid into a hollow space.
  - Out of this darkness as if from far away came a strange gurgling and washing of water, intermingled with a sound like cloop—cloop—cloop—such as water often makes when flowing a-whirl out of the bottom of a basin beneath a tap.1892 September 1, Edward W[illiam] Thomson, “Smoky Days. In Six Chapters—Chapter V. Imprisoned in the Cave.”, in The Youth’s Companion, New England edition, volume 65, number 35, Boston, Mass.: Perry...
  - The stream, black and sluggish, scarce appeared to move; the only sound you heard was the faint cloop of the water that the boat in its passage sent washing against the hollowed banks; […]1899, A[shley] W[alrond] Clarke, chapter XX, in Jaspar Tristram […], London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 209
3. The sound made by a horse's hoof hitting a hard surface.
  - Holonym: clip-clop
  - What is with us mainly a harsh, metallic shriek, a grind of trolley wheels upon trolley tracks, and a wild battering of their polygonized circles upon the rails, is in London the dull, tormented roar of the omnibuses and the incessant cloop-cloop of the cab-horses' hoofs.1905, W[illiam] D[ean] Howells, “The Sights and Sounds of the Streets”, in London Films, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers […], →OCLC, page 52

Verb

cloop (third-person singular simple present cloops, present participle clooping, simple past and past participle clooped)

(intransitive) To make a cloop (slightly hollow, percussive) sound (noun etymology 1, noun sense 1).
- The young men brought up the rear, each with a basket, from which there came ever and anon a cool clooping noise, maddeningly suggestive of refreshing drinks imprisoned within the wicker.1872, [Mary Elizabeth] Braddon, “Mr. Walgrave indulges his Social Instincts”, in To the Bitter End […], volume I, London: John Maxwell and Co. […], →OCLC, page 89
- Not even by the lightning flashes could Peter see down the corridor into which the creek thus turned, and ran, and clooped.1896, Edward W[illiam] Thomson, “Imprisoned in the Cave”, in Walter Gibbs, the Young Boss and Other Stories: A Book for Boys, Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, […], →OCLC, page 253

Noun (2)

cloop (plural cloops)

(informal) A small, seedy bar or nightclub; a dive.
- He had resolved not to segue into the jig he used to do in the "cloops" because his singing was the issue here.1999, Alvin Yudkoff, “1940: New York”, in Gene Kelly: A Life of Dance and Dreams, New York, N.Y.: Back Stage Books, →ISBN, page 77
- This may be a deliberate tie-in to what Gene [Kelly]'s brother Fred [Norbert Kelly] did when they played the "cloops" as teenagers.2009, Earl J. Hess, Pratibha A. Dabholkar, “Everything but Dancing”, in Singin’ in the Rain: The Making of an American Masterpiece, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, →ISBN, page 140

Noun (3)

cloop (uncountable)

A compression technology for Linux files stored on a read-only block device that allows files to be decompressed on the fly.
- The magic is in the big file called /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX, an ISO9660 filesystem image compressed for the cloop device.2005 April, Daniel Barlow, “Building Your Own Live CD”, in Don Marti, editor, Linux Journal, number 132, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 54, column 1
- Using cloop technology, you can more than double the amount of software and data you can get on a live CD.2006 November, Christopher Negus, “Using the Cloop Driver”, in Live Linux CDs: Building and Customizing Bootables (Negus Live Linux Series), Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, →ISBN, chapter 5...

cloop meaning in Tamil

cloop in Tamil

தக்கைத்திறப்போசை

Examples of cloop in a sentence

She began walking away from the open room, toward the teddies, her shoe heels going cloop, cloop.2023, Daniel Kraus, chapter 19, in They Set the Fire (The Teddies Saga; 3), New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, “Evidence”...
Solo songs are several repetitions of the same phrase, e.g., a liquid mellow cloop cloop cloop or peewit peewit peewit.2015, Thane K. Pratt, Bruce M[cPherson] Beehler, “Magpielark Grallina cyanoleuca”, in Birds of New Guinea (Princeton Field Guides), 2nd...
One of the boys frankly informed me there was goose for dinner; and when a cheerful cloop was heard from a neighbouring room, told me that was Pa drawing the corks.1861 January – 1862 August, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “Treats of Dancing, Dining, Dying”, in The Adventures of Philip on His Way...
It was a solemn moment when the cork came out with a cloop.1910, J[ohn] J[oy] Bell, “His Justice”, in Wullie McWattie’s Master, New York, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill.: Fleming H[ewitt] Revell Company, →OCLC...

Synonyms of cloop

clop

Forms of cloop

Noun
plural	cloops
Verb
third-person singular present	cloops
present participle	clooping
past participle	clooped
past	clooped

Origin of cloop

Onomatopoeic.

Blend of club + coop.

Blend of c(ompressed) + loop.

Words that rhyme with cloop

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cloop

What does cloop mean?: Cloop means a slightly hollow, percussive sound.
What is cloop in Tamil?: Cloop in Tamil is தக்கைத்திறப்போசை. See Cloop meaning in Tamil.
How do you use cloop in a sentence?: She began walking away from the open room, toward the teddies, her shoe heels going cloop, cloop.
What part of speech is cloop?: Cloop can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cloop?: Cloop is pronounced /kluːp/ (UK).
What is the plural of cloop?: The plural of cloop is cloops.

Words near cloop in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: cloop (page history and authors); cloop (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cloop.wav.

Cite this entry: “cloop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cloop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.