hoop

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A circular band of metal or wood put around a cask or barrel to bind the staves together.
• noun A large wooden, plastic, or metal ring, especially one used as a plaything or for trained animals to jump through.
• noun One of the lightweight circular supports for a hoop skirt.
• noun A circular, ringlike earring.
• noun One of a pair of circular frames, usually of wood or plastic, used to hold material taut for embroidery or similar needlework.
• noun The basket.
• noun A field goal.
• noun The game of basketball.
• noun Sports A croquet wicket.
• transitive verb To hold together or support with a hoop.
• transitive verb To encircle.
• idiom (jump/go) To undergo a rigorous trial or examination.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A circular band or flattened ring of wood, metal, or other material; especially, a band of wood or metal used to confine the staves of casks, tubs, etc., or for any similar purpose; also, that part of a finger-ring which surrounds the finger, as distinguished from the chaton.
• noun A large ring of wood or iron for a child to trundle.
• noun A circular band of stiff material serving to expand the skirt of a woman's dress: often used, either in the singular or in the plural, for the skirt itself so expanded.
• noun Something resembling a hoop; anything circular: technically applied in botany to the overlapping edge of one of the valves of the frustule of the Diatomaceæ.
• noun A certain quantity of drink, up to the first hoop on a quart pot (which was formerly bound with hoops like a barrel).
• noun An old English measure of capacity, variously estimated at from 1 to 4 pecks.
• noun The casing inclosing a pair of millstones; also, a reinforcing band about one of the stones.
• To bind or fasten with a hoop or with hoops; provide with a hoop: as, to hoop a barrel or puncheon.
• To clasp; encircle; surround.
• noun Same as whoop.
• noun Same as hoopoe.
• noun A bullfinch.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A pliant strip of wood or metal bent in a circular form, and united at the ends, for holding together the staves of casks, tubs, etc.
• noun A ring; a circular band; anything resembling a hoop, as the cylinder (cheese hoop) in which the curd is pressed in making cheese.
• noun A circle, or combination of circles, of thin whalebone, metal, or other elastic material, used for expanding the skirts of ladies' dresses; crinoline; -- used chiefly in the plural.
• noun obsolete A quart pot; -- so called because originally bound with hoops, like a barrel. Also, a portion of the contents measured by the distance between the hoops.
• noun engraving An old measure of capacity, variously estimated at from one to four pecks.
• noun the hoop nearest the middle of a cask, that nearest the end, and the intermediate hoop between these two, respectively.
• noun a wooden hoop dressed flat on both sides.
• noun a wooden hoop left rounding and undressed on the outside.
• noun iron in thin narrow strips, used for making hoops.
• noun the fastening for uniting the ends of wooden hoops by notching and interlocking them.
• noun a framework of hoops for expanding the skirts of a woman's dress; -- called also hoop petticoat.
• noun (Zoöl.) a harmless snake of the Southern United States (Abaster erythrogrammus); -- so called from the mistaken notion that it curves itself into a hoop, taking its tail into its mouth, and rolls along with great velocity.
• noun (Bot.) a small West Indian tree (Melia sempervirens), of the Mahogany family.
• transitive verb To bind or fasten with hoops.
• transitive verb To clasp; to encircle; to surround.
• intransitive verb To utter a loud cry, or a sound imitative of the word, by way of call or pursuit; to shout.
• intransitive verb To whoop, as in whooping cough. See Whoop.
• intransitive verb (Med.) See Whooping cough.
• transitive verb To drive or follow with a shout.
• transitive verb To call by a shout or peculiar cry.
• noun A shout; a whoop, as in whooping cough.
• noun (Zoöl.) The hoopoe. See Hoopoe.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A shout; a whoop, as in whooping cough.