Word.ws English Dictionary

stops up

stops up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of stop up.

Meaning of stop up

Verb

stop up (third-person singular simple present stops up, present participle stopping up, simple past and past participle stopped up)

  1. To fill a hole or cavity, or block (an opening or passage), as with a plug.
    • So then we […] scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could.1885, Mark Twain, chapter 37, in Huckleberry Finn
  2. (UK) To permanently close or block (a road or path); to legally extinguish a right of way.
  3. To increase the aperture of a photographic lens, moving from an f/stop represented by a higher number to an f/stop represented by a lower number and causing more light to pass into the camera.
    • To stop down means to narrow the aperture; to stop up or open up means to expand it.2002, Kathleen Tracy, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Portrait Photography, →ISBN, page 18

Questions about stops up

What is stops up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Stops up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of stop up.

Words near stops up in the dictionary

  1. stops the bleeding
  2. stops the job
  3. stops the presses
  4. stops traffic
  5. stops two gaps with one bush
  6. stops up
  7. stops-and-frisks
  8. stops-and-searches
  9. stopsign
  10. stopsigns
  11. stopstreet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stops up (page history and authors); stop up (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.

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