Dropped

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /dɹɑpt/

Definitions

1. To have let something fall unintentionally from one’s hand or position ; to have moved downward due to gravity or loss of support ; to have ceased an activity or stopped abruptly
2. The act of releasing or losing hold of an object by accident ; the motion of falling or sinking lower ; the sudden end or termination of an event or process
3. Having lost grip or control of an item causing it to fall ; positioned at a lower point after falling ; having discontinued or finished something quickly and unexpectedly

Etymology: "Dropped" is the past tense and past participle of "drop," so its story is really the story of the verb it comes from. "Drop" is an Old English word, "dropian" or "droppian," which referred to a small rounded mass of liquid falling, the sort of thing you would see gathering at the end of a leaking roof. Its roots lie in Germanic speech, and it shares ancestry with the German "Tropfen," still meaning a drop of liquid. The core idea was always a small, detached quantity letting go and falling. Over the centuries, that single image of a falling bead of water broadened into the sense of anything being let go of or lowered. The meaning of abandoning or dismissing something, as in dropping a subject or a friend, grew out of the same movement: something released and no longer held. Among the verb's many uses, the sense of ending or giving up quickly carries the same suddenness, as if the thing simply fell away from attention.

Synonyms: falling, let go, released

Antonyms: caught, held