Word Confusion: Lop versus Lope

Plural for the noun: lops
Gerund: lopping

Third person present verb: lops
Past tense or past participle: lopped
Present participle: lopping

Plural for the noun: lope
Gerund: loping

Third person present verb: lopes
Past tense or past participle: loped
Present participle: loping

Noun:
Branches and twigs cut off trees ²

Parts or a part lopped off

[Of trees] The smaller branches and twigs not useful as timber

[Northern English dialect; Tyneside] A flea ³

Verb, intransitive:
To cut off branches, twigs, etc., as of a tree ²

• To remove parts by or as by cutting

[North American; archaic] Hang loosely or limply ¹

• Droop

[With adverbial of direction] Move in a slouching way

Verb, transitive:
Cut off (a branch, limb, or other protrusion) from the main body of a tree or other plant ²

• Remove branches from (a tree)
• To cut off (a limb, a part, or the like) from an animal, etc.
• [Informal] Remove something regarded as unnecessary, excessive, or burdensome

[Archaic] To cut off the head, limbs, etc., (of a person)

The act or the gait of a long easy stride

Verb, intransitive:
[With adverbial of direction] Run or move with a long bounding stride, as a quadruped, or with a long, easy stride, as a person

[Horse training, Riding, Manège] To canter leisurely with a rather long, easy stride, as a horse

[Also lope off; adverb/preposition] To run easily with long steps

Verb, transitive:
To cause to lope, as a horse

He’s always taking in some lop-eared stray dog.

We also have a lop eared rabbit called Smudge.

Noun:
In many forests they took the lop and top, and in some cases the stump, of trees.

The discarded lop and top is a potential source of wood fuel.

Since fuelwood is derived largely from small trees, coppice and lop and top, either new uses have to be found for surplus wood from these sources or else it is left standing or lying wasted in the forest.

“Hadway wi ye man, ye liftin’ wi lops.”

Verb, intransitive:
He had a stomach that lopped over his belt.

There was a rabbit lopping through the garden.

Verb, transitive:
They lopped off more branches to save the tree.

They had lopped some trees without permission.

It lops an hour off commuting time.

We had to lop off whole pages of the report before presenting it to the committee.

Lop off his head!

He warned her before he went from standing still to a fast lope.

She swung up into the saddle and nudged the chestnut into a fast lope.

“Then he alternated between a trot and a lope, eating up the miles without wearing down the horses” (Lowell).

Verb, intransitive:
The dog was loping along by his side.

The mustang is loping across the plateau, head down, moving quickly.

But she looked very much a confident athlete on Saturday as she loped along comfortably on the lead.

He loped off down the corridor.

Verb, transitive:
“Duane and Dicky lope backstage afterwards to ‘do some sniff’, as Dicky terms it” (Lewis).

1. Late 16th century, probably symbolic of limpness.
2. Late Middle English, as a noun, is of unknown origin.
3. Probably from the Old Norse hloppa (unattested) meaning flea, from hlaupa meaning to leap.