droop

verb

1. (intransitive)To hang downward; to sag.

   “On the brown harvest tree / Droops the red cherry.”

   “Long before Shap platform showed up around a corner and the two arms on the gradient post drooped in both directions at once, Duchess of Buccleuch's amiable throbbing purr at the stack [funnel, chimney] had become a fierce freight-engine bark, as she resolutely dragged at her enormous load.”

   “a. 1992, quote attributed to Sylvester Stallone I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.”

2. (intransitive)To slowly become limp; to bend gradually.

   “Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; / While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”

   “The Grapes that on it hung were black, and all / The Vines supported and from drooping staid / With silver Props, that down they could not fall […]”

   “Long after his cigar burnt bitter, he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze. When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth[…].”

   “Others who conscientiously attended the Technical College at night often drooped over their desks in a doze, and one does not wonder at it.”

   “His head had drooped with his hair across his face.”

3. (intransitive)To lose all energy, enthusiasm or happiness; to flag.

   “But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?”

   “Amidst the peaceful Triumphs of his Reign, / What wonder if the kindly beams he shed / Reviv’d the drooping Arts again […]”

   “I saw him accidentally once or twice about 10 Days before he died, and observed he began very much to Droop and Languish […]”

   “I’ll animate the Soldier’s drooping Courage, / With Love of Freedom, and Contempt of Life.”

   “And I should tell him all my pain, / ⁠And how my life had droop’d of late, / ⁠And he should sorrow o’er my state / And marvel what possess’d my brain; […]”

4. (transitive)To allow to droop or sink.

   “[…] pithless arms, like to a wither’d vine / That droops his sapless branches to the ground;”

   “1892, Arthur Christopher Benson, “Knapweed” in Le Cahier Jaune: Poems, Eton: privately printed, p. 62, Down in the mire he droops his head; Forgotten, not forgiven.”

5. (figuratively, intransitive)To proceed downward, or toward a close; to decline.

   “[…] let us forth, / I never from thy side henceforth to stray, / Wherere our days work lies, though now enjoind / Laborious, till day droop […]”

   “[…] and now when day / Droop’d, and the chapel tinkled, mixt with those / Six hundred maidens clad in purest white […]”

   “Share prices are drooping.”

noun

1. Something which is limp or sagging.
2. A condition or posture of drooping.

   “He walked with a discouraged droop.”

3. A hinged portion of the leading edge of an aeroplane's wing, which swivels downward to increase lift during takeoff and landing.

adj

1. (archaic)Drooping; adroop.

   “But when the melancholy fit shall fall / Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, / That fosters the droop-headed flowers all. / And hides the green hill in an April shroud :”