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stoop (STOOP) - v., to bend downward from the waist; to stand or walk with the head and upper back bent forward; to yield, submit, descend from or do something below one's status, standards, or morals.
(There are several other meanings, including the swoop of a raptor onto prey and steps leading up to a front door, but I'm picking out a specific semantic cluster of interest.) Key to the physical sense is not bending the knees, or else it's squatting or crouching. This is an old one, with Middle English form stoupen, from Old English form stūpian, bow/bend, from conjectural Proto-West-Germanic form *stūpōn, from a Proto-Germanic conjectural word *stūpōną/*stūpijaną, to stand out, from PIE *(s)tewb-, to push forward/butt -- which is an interesting bit of linguistic drift. (Other cognates from that PIE root include steep and stupefy.)
---L.
(There are several other meanings, including the swoop of a raptor onto prey and steps leading up to a front door, but I'm picking out a specific semantic cluster of interest.) Key to the physical sense is not bending the knees, or else it's squatting or crouching. This is an old one, with Middle English form stoupen, from Old English form stūpian, bow/bend, from conjectural Proto-West-Germanic form *stūpōn, from a Proto-Germanic conjectural word *stūpōną/*stūpijaną, to stand out, from PIE *(s)tewb-, to push forward/butt -- which is an interesting bit of linguistic drift. (Other cognates from that PIE root include steep and stupefy.)
---L.
