cloop — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A slightly hollow, percussive sound.

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   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.

   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 dress-pumps was drawn off his unfortunate foot with a ‘cloop’ and stuck there.

   She began walking away from the open room, toward the teddies, her shoe heels going cloop, cloop.

   Solo songs are several repetitions of the same phrase, e.g., a liquid mellow cloop cloop cloop or peewit peewit peewit.

2. A slightly hollow, percussive sound. The sound made when a cork is forcibly drawn from a bottle.

   Examples

   […] 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.

   More examples (3)

   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.

   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.

   Scarce has the fish, bull-headed cod or blushing mullet, swum into our ken ere a cork leaps forth with a cloop of joy, and straightway, as on the approach of spring, the sap stirs and the buds of speech burst into life, and talk, reluctant and hidebound no more, bursts into many-coloured bloom.

   [T]he bottle was handed to him. The point of the screw pierced the red wax and entered the cork. It was a solemn moment when the cork came out with a cloop.

   More examples (2)

   [M]en / and women who enjoy the cloop of corks, appreciate / dapatical fare, yet can see in swallowing / a sign act of reverence, / in speech a work of re-presenting / the true olamic silence.

   Valentina clamped the Napoleon brandy bottle between her thighs amongst the floral skirt, and with a cloop the cork popped out.

3. A slightly hollow, percussive sound. The sound made by the movement of liquid into a hollow space.

   Examples

   More examples (5)

   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.

   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; […]

   The water’s own noises, too, were more apparent than by day, its gurglings and ‘cloops’ more unexpected and near at hand; and constantly they started at what seemed a sudden clear call from an actual articulate voice.

   Again on sheltered stretches Stair could send a smooth, flat stone skipping from one side to the other of the still bay, which Patsy declared was no sort of sport because hers, though every bit as well thrown as Stair's, invariably plumped to the bottom with a little farewell "cloop" as soon as they encountered the water.

   ‘Cloops’ and ‘splooshes’ across the river were close enough to soak me, bats skimming the surface of the river wafted my face with their vampire-cloak wings, and the occasional ‘thunk’ of a suicidal moth hitting the lamp sounded like a gun-shot.

4. A slightly hollow, percussive sound. The sound made by a horse's hoof hitting a hard surface.

   Synonyms

   clop

   Examples

   Holonym: clip-clop

   More examples (2)

   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.

   The only sounds are the cloop-cloop of the horses' hoofs in the procession, the roar of the officers' carriages upon the stone streets, and the solemn voices of the imperial heralds, warning the people to make way for the procession.

   You will know soon enough when they are—cloop! cloop! cloop! go the hoofs under your windows long before you have thought of breakfast.

   More examples (1)

   The cloop-cloop of the horse's hoofs on the road rang out musically in the frosty air, raising ringing, iron-sounding echoes, like blacksmith's sledges on an anvil.

Verb

1. To make a cloop (slightly hollow, percussive) sound (noun etymology 1, noun sense 1).

   Usage

   • Intransitive

   Examples

   More examples (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.

   Not even by the lightning flashes could Peter see down the corridor into which the creek thus turned, and ran, and clooped.

   He beat his breast and "clooped" his lips like any aborigine in the agony of "chop" deferred.

   More examples (4)

   Again on sheltered stretches Stair could send a smooth, flat stone skipping from one side to the other of the still bay, which Patsy declared was no sort of sport because hers, though every bit as well thrown as Stair's, invariably plumped to the bottom with a little farewell "cloop" as soon as they encountered the water. "You get all the best stones!" Patsy cried at last, vexed at her lack of success. Whereupon Stair handed over his ammunition to her, which "clooped" and sank as before.

   On Sunday she jumped off the roan three-year-old at eight o'clock, after she had ridden since six, and after the animal's tired hoofs had clooped over the pavement on Main Street down to the front of our Phirst Fotografer's studio.

   On good days the rise was a sunny thicket of alders sheltering deer and foxes, surrounded by marshland which clicked and clooped with waders and amphibia, where pelicans sailed in to land like full-rigged galleons.

   [A] silver fish clooped a lazy arc downstream, not really caring that the mayfly were out of reach; […]

Noun

1. A small, seedy bar or nightclub; a dive.

   Usage

   • Informal

   Examples

   He had resolved not to segue into the jig he used to do in the "cloops" because his singing was the issue here.

   This may be a deliberate tie-in to what Gene [Kelly]'s brother Fred [Norbert Kelly] did when they played the "cloops" as teenagers.

   More examples (1)

   Kelly wasn't a singer, but a talented dancer who had also spent many hours in vaudeville houses and after-hours "cloops," learning tap steps from the great vaudevillians and street dancers in order to bring these steps back to his students at the Kelly family dance studio.

Noun

1. A compression technology for Linux files stored on a read-only block device that allows files to be decompressed on the fly.

   Usage

   • Uncountable

   Examples

   The magic is in the big file called /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX, an ISO9660 filesystem image compressed for the cloop device.

   Using cloop technology, you can more than double the amount of software and data you can get on a live CD.

   More examples (1)

   Load a MyDSL extension (xchat.uci) to check that the cloop driver is working.