[A dialectal var. of LOUP sb. a. ON. hlǫup: see LEAP sb.1 Some of the uses may be from Du. loop, which is etymologically identical, and others are prob. from the Eng. vb.]
† 1. = LEAP sb.1 in various senses. Obs.
14[?]. S. Eng. Leg. (MS. Bodl. 779), in Herrig’s Archiv, LXXXII. 402/47. He ordeyned þat ech man þat prest wolde be scholde vndirfong þe ordres fro gre to gre; wit-oute lope & defaute.
a. 1420. Hoccleve, De Reg. Princ., 3436. He at a lope was at hir, and hir kist.
c. 1440. Capgrave, Life St. Kath., II. 223. Tyme goth fast, it is full lyght of lope.
1483. Cath. Angl., 220/2. A Lope, saltus.
1596. Dalrymple, trans. Leslie’s Hist. Scot., I. 51. Quhairfor, ony Lope thocht wondirful, is … commounlie called the Salmont lope.
1662. Cotgrave, Wits Interpreter (ed. 2), 323. He makes no more to run on a rope, Then a Puritan does of a Bishop or Pope. And comes down with a vengeance at one single lope.
a. 1734. North, Exam., III. viii. § 47 (1740), 618. I cannot do the Author Justice … without taking a large Lope, over the next Reign, into that which followed.
2. A long bounding stride. (Said chiefly of the gait of animals.)
1846. T. B. Thorpe, Backwoods, 13. [The mustang pony] goes rollicking ahead, with the eternal lope … a mixture of two or three gaits, as easy as the motions of a cradle.
1889. R. Kipling, Fr. Sea to Sea (1900), I. xx. 430. The Jap soldier … doubles with the easy lope of the ’rickshaw coolie.
1894. Crockett, Lilac Sunbonnet, 310. At his usual swift wolf’s lope he was out of sight … speedily.
3. Comb.: lope-way (see quots.).
1736. Pegge, Kenticisms (E.D.S.), Lope-way, a private footpath.
1791. Gentl. Mag., LXI. II. 928. A lope-way in Kent is now a short or quick way or bridle-way.
