stop lists

Noun

stop list (plural stop lists)

1. A list of words or other data items which, for some special reason, should be ignored or bypassed by a particular data processing operation.
   • If you equip your search engine with a stop list containing a few common words such as "a", "the", and "and", you can decrease the full-text index size by about 20%.
2. A list of people who subscribed to a publication (e.g. newspaper) but no longer wish to receive it.
3. A list of the stops found on a particular organ.
   • The history of the small organ is poorly documented; the earliest known stop list, written by the Lübeck organ builder Theodore Vogt, dates from about 1845.1987, Kerala J. Snyder, Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Lübeck, page 81