stopper

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

• noun A device, such as a cork or plug, that is inserted to close an opening.
• noun One that causes something to stop.
• noun Games A card or cards enabling one to prevent one's opponents from winning all the tricks in a particular suit in a hand of bridge.
• noun Baseball A relief pitcher, especially one called upon to protect a lead.
• noun A player who excels on defense, as in basketball.
• noun In soccer, a defensive player who plays behind the center midfielder and often guards the opponent's best forward.
• noun A goalie.
• transitive verb To close with or as if with a stopper.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To close or secure with a stopple: as, stoppered bottles.
• To fit with a stopple or stopples.
• Nautical, to secure with a stopper or stoppers.
• noun In the Bahamas, either of two trees, the red rodwood, Eugenia axillaris
• noun and the marlberry, Icacorea paniculata. See marlberry.
• noun One who or that which stops or plugs.
• noun That which closes or fills up (an opening, etc.), as a plug, a bung, or a cork; especially, such an article for the mouth of a fruit-jar, decanter, or vial, when made of the same material as the vessel itself, and having no special name, as cork, bung, etc.; a stopple; specifically, a device for closing bottles for aërated water. See cut under siphon-bottle.
• noun A convenient utensil made of wood, bone, ivory, or the like, formerly used to compress or pack some loose or fiocculent substance into small compass.
• noun One who or that which brings to a stop or stand; specifically, one of the players in tennis, foot-ball, and other games, who stops the balls.
• noun Nautical, a piece of rope secured at one end to a bolt or the like, used to check the motion of another rope or of a cable. Stoppers for cables are of various construction, such as an iron clamp with a lever or screw, a claw of iron with a rope attached, etc.
• noun In an organ, a wooden plug inserted in the tops of certain kinds of pipes, as in those of the stopped diapason, flute, bourdon, etc., whence they are called stopped pipes. Such pipes are tuned by means of the stopper.
• noun In a vehicle, a bar of wood with iron points pivoted to the body, and allowed to trail on the ground behind to serve as a stop or brake in ascending steep grades. Such a device is used, for instance, on icecarts plying on hilly streets, where stoppages are frequent.
• noun The upper pad or principal callosity of the sole of a dog's foot.
• noun A small tree of one of four species of the genus Eugenia occurring in Florida.

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

• transitive verb To close or secure with a stopper.
• noun One who stops, closes, shuts, or hinders; that which stops or obstructs; that which closes or fills a vent or hole in a vessel.
• noun (Naut.) A short piece of rope having a knot at one or both ends, with a lanyard under the knot, -- used to secure something.
• noun (Bot.) A name to several trees of the genus Eugenia, found in Florida and the West Indies. See Eugenia.
• noun (Naut.) a short rope or chain passing through the anchor ring, to secure the anchor to the cathead.
• noun (Naut.) a large ringbolt in a ship's deck, to which the deck stoppers are hooked.

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

• noun Agent noun of stop, someone or something that stops something.
• noun A type of knot at the end of a rope, to prevent it from unravelling.
• noun A bung or cork
• noun slang, soccer goalkeeper
• noun finance, slang In the commodity futures market, someone who is long (owns) a futures contract and is demanding delivery because they want to take possession of the deliverable commodity.
• noun rail transport A train that calls at all or almost all stations between its origin and destination, including very small ones.
• verb To close a container by using a stopper.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun (bridge) a playing card with a value sufficiently high to insure taking a trick in a particular suit
• noun a remark to which there is no polite conversational reply
• noun an act so striking or impressive that the show must be delayed until the audience quiets down
• verb close or secure with or as if with a stopper
• noun blockage consisting of an object designed to fill a hole tightly