c1330 Seven Sages (Auch.) (1933) 1280 Þer was a burgeis..Þat wolde spouse no nehebours schild, But wente fram hom as a moppe wild.

c1390 Cato's Distichs (Vernon) 418 in F. J. Furnivall Minor Poems Vernon MS (1901) ii. 587 (MED) Mekeliche þou suffre chidyng of fool oþer of moppe.

a1425 (?a1350) Gospel of Nicodemus (Galba) (1907) 21 (MED) Þis mopp þat merres our men, kalles him god sun of heuyn.

a1450 York Plays (1885) 299 (MED) Thus mop meynes þat he may marke men to þer mede.

c1475 (c1399) Mum & Sothsegger (Cambr. Ll.4.14) (1936) iii. 276 (MED) With deyntes y-doublid and daunsinge to pipis, In myrthe with moppis, myrrours of synne.

Promptorium Parvulorum (Harl. 221) 342 Moppe, or popyne, pupa, pusio.

a1500 (a1460) Towneley Plays (1897–1973) 115 Hayll, lytyll tyne mop!

1598 J. Florio Worlde of Wordes A daintie mop, a playing babie.

1466 in Manners & Househ. Expenses Eng. (1841) 337 My mastyr paid for xxix. codmoppes, x.d.

1562 J. Heywood Epigr. xv. sig. Ziij I ane thou sellest sweete conies in this pultry shoppe: But none so sweete as thy selfe, sweete conye moppe.

1577 J. Dee Gen. Mem. Arte Nauig. 48 For, the most parte of those, which they send, are Vnreasonable or Vnlawfull Smelts, or Whiting-Mops.

1589 G. Puttenham Arte Eng. Poesie iii. xix. 184 In our triumphals calling familiarly vpon our Muse, I called her Moppe... Vnderstanding by this word (Moppe) a litle prety Lady, or tender young thing. For so we call litle fishes, that be not come to their full growth (moppes,) as whiting moppes, gurnard moppes.

1597 J. Lyly Woman in Moone v. i Pandora..louest thou Gunophilus? Pan. I, if he be a fish, for fish is fine; Sweete Stesias helpe me to a whiting moppe.

1607 T. Dekker & J. Webster West-ward Hoe ii. ii. sig. C2^v Do you hear, the whiting mop has nibled.

1630 J. Taylor Jacke-a-Lent in Wks. i. 117/1 The Whiting, Rotchet,..and the Mop.

a1641 T. Heywood Captives (1953) ii. ii. 44 Wheres my sweete? not heare, no where, why hoe my whytinge mopp late scapt ffrom ffeedinge haddocks.

1758 R. Griffiths Descr. Thames 222 The young Fish of this Sort are called by the Londoners Whiting-Mopps.

a1475 (?a1440) B. Burgh Distichs of Cato (Harl.) 690 Moppe [c1475 Rawl. Riht As thou deprauyst hym, behynde thy bakke, Riht so wol men make the a mowe and a knakke].

1581 G. Pettie tr. S. Guazzo Ciuile Conuersat. i. sig. 32 b The Ape..giueth himselfe to make vs laugh with his mops and mowes.

a1625 J. Fletcher Wild-goose Chase (1652) iii. i. 24 Heartily I hate these Travellers, These Gim-cracks, made of Mops, and Motions.

1668 R. L'Estrange tr. F. G. de Quevedo y Villegas Visions (1708) 29 Others they call'd Apes (and we Mimicks), these were perpetually making of Mopps and Mowes.

1710 Banbury Apes (ed. 4) 8 Truly, says the Mayor, there's sufficient witness that saw him make Mops and Mows at her.

1820 Marmaiden of Clyde in A. Whitelaw Bk. Sc. Ballads (1857) 92/2 Wi' mop an' mowr, an' glare an' glowr, Grim faces grin ower the waves.

1893 R. L. Stevenson Catriona iii. 29 The mops and mows of the old witch.

1993 P. Beer Pilgrims Crossing in Friend of Heraclitus 32 The village idiot, Feeble-mind, Has left his moonstruck brain behind With his protective mops and mows.

1616 B. Rich My Ladies Looking Glasse 14 Thou art clouded and ouershadowed with a monstrous Moppe of Haire.

1696 M. Pix Spanish Wives Prol. sig. A3 Well, how's the Wind here?.. Then hiss it goes; Oh, that's a plaguy Sound; Igad, 'tis worse to every Actor's Ear, Than Frets of Wind to your huge Mops of Hair.

1809 W. Irving Hist. N.Y. II. v. vii. 65 A rugged mop of hair, not a little resembling the shag of a Newfoundland dog.

1847 J. O. Halliwell Dict. Archaic & Provinc. Words II Mop, a tuft of grass. West.

1874 J. A. Symonds Sketches Italy & Greece (1898) I. xiv. 307 She had..a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair.

1887 O. W. Holmes 100 Days Europe i. 32 Trees..feathered all the way up their long slender trunks with a lop-sided mop of leaves at the top, like a wig which has slipped awry.

1922 ‘R. Crompton’ More William (1924) ix. 150 Thomas's blue eyes, beneath a mop of curls, met his coldly.

1931 Amer. Speech 7 7 Not only could the hunters sell the hide but also the ‘mop’ the bunch of long hair that fell over the buffalo's horns and eyes.

1963 L. Hairston in Freedomways Winter 52 The only way you'll ever get your mop to grow natural again..is to have your head shaved!

1838 W. H. Prescott Hist. Reign Ferdinand & Isabella II. i. xvii. 145 The mop, or hyssop, with which the Roman catholic missionaries were wont to scatter the holy drops.

1860 E. Cowell Diary 66 Each snuff dipper has her bottle and swab stick or box and mop.

1869 Eng. Mechanic 26 Nov. 254/1 Trees..are painted in..with a tool called a gilder's mop.

1875 H. C. Wood Treat. Therapeutics (1879) 100 It should be applied by means of a little mop, scrupulous care being exercised to prevent any of the acid from coming in contact with parts not protected.

1898 T. B. Wigley Art Goldsmith & Jeweller xv. 136 A ‘calico mop’ charged with a little rouge moistened with water.

1904 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 17 Dec. 1647 A Uterine Mop.

1977 Harrison Mayer Ltd. Catal. 46/1 Mops—A full range of special mixture hair and pure squirrel hair mops. These full bodied brushes are used for the application of slips and glazes.

1992 Independent 18 Nov. 9/3 A machine he had developed for laying down Teflon coatings and polishing the surfaces..consists of a spinning ‘mop’, or cylinder, built up from circles of material.

1844 B. Greenleaf Introd. National Arithm. 268 In [the room]..are two doors, 6 feet 6 inches high, and 30 inches wide, and the mop-boards are 8 inches high.

1928 Sat. Evening Post (Philadelphia) 12 May 114/2 Brant and Corbin were moving the desk slap up against the window to get the lamp cord out of the mop-board.

1996 L. Erdrich Tales of Burning Love 358 She stands barefoot in men's pajamas, looking at the mopboard.

1904 Westm. Gaz. 10 Sept. 14/2 Take a mop brush and coat the paper quickly and evenly.

1995 Independent on Sunday 12 Nov. (Review Suppl.) 76/2 Using a 1in/2.5cm mop brush, lay the first stroke of cerulean blue across the paper from left to right.

1934 Rep. Supreme Court Idaho 53 52 Mrs. Larson was killed by falling or slipping, and striking her head on a mop bucket she was using on one of the floors.

1979 G. Liddy Out of Control i. 4 Any odor he left would be masked by the stench of the disinfectant-laced water that half-filled a wheeled mop bucket with wringer attachment.

2001 Mirror (Electronic ed.) 4 Jan. A guacamole with Ryvita or a swig from the mop bucket?

1841 S. Bamford Passages Life Radical I. xxxvii. 216 Some had been grinding scythes, others..screw-drivers, rusty swords, pikels, and mop-nails.

a1877 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. II. 1474/2 Mop-nail, a flat-headed nail, used in securing a bunch of junk or rope-ends to a handle in making a mop such as sailors use.

?1758 Congratulatory Epist. from Reformed Rake 23 From Mop-squeezers. Were promoted to Whores.

1770 J. Brown Let. 17 Dec. in Notes & Queries (1939) 18 Nov. 364/1 There is a great number of Ladies here... Suppose most of them were only chamber maids and mopsqueezers in England.

1824 E. Weeton Jrnl. Governess (1969) I. 6 Unless a father can provide independent fortunes for his daughters, they must either be made mop squeezers, or mantua makers.

1950 G. S. Coffin Poker Game Compl. App. D. 213 Mop Squeezers, colloquial for queens.

1960 Los Angeles Times 8 June iii. 1/7 Triplets Tom, Dick and Harry, 5 [are] billed as the Moptop Kids for their Harpo Marx hairdo.

1964 N.Y. Herald Tribune 10 Feb. 23/5 Without their shaggy-dog moptops and their sensational buildup, they would be four nice boys with a total of one weak voice and one weak beat that rolls more than it rocks.

1988 Woman's Day (Melbourne) 4 Oct. 29/3 It seems more and more likely that aging moptop Paul McCartney will start a world tour next summer.

1993 Face Sept. 147/3 Desperate to ride in on the back of the British invasion, he tries out his own moptop do.

1677 R. Plot Nat. Hist. Oxford-shire 203 In the Northern part of Oxfordshire,..it has always been the custom at set times of year, for young people to meet to be hired as servants; which meeting, at Banbury they call the Mop; at Bloxham the Statute.

1743 in J. Noake Rambler in Worcs. A mapp will be held at the same time for the hiring of servants.

1797 F. M. Eden State of Poor I. 33 (note) In Gloucestershire..servants continue to attend the mopp or statute, as it is called (i.e. Michaelmas fair), in order to be hired.

c1830 Mrs. Sherwood in Houlston Tracts III. No. 62. 3 It is an ancient custom..for servants out of place to assemble, once a year, in or near some great town, for the purpose of being hired. I have heard my mother say, that formerly each person carried a mop, or a broom, or a flail,..or some other badge denoting the office in which they desired to engage; but this was done away with before my time. In this assemblage, which is called a mop, persons in want of servants generally make their choice.

1859 All Year Round 12 Nov. 52 The provincial policeman had said that it was the Mop, or, as the officer pronounced it, the Mope-day.

1894 Westm. Gaz. 13 Oct. 5/3 Stratford-on-Avon ‘mop’, said to be the largest statute fair in England, was held yesterday.

1951 Recorded Interview (Brit. Libr. Sound Archive) (Survey Eng. Dialects: C908) Track 58 They used to roast a beast, they call it a mop. Roast a carcass, sell it, then there were shows and bucks and booze.

1999 Coventry Evening Tel. (Nexis) 16 Oct. 3 Roads closed as Mop comes to town. Southam town centre will be closed to traffic on Monday as thousands of people gather for the annual Mop fair.

2017 @RNTomlinson 22 Oct. in twitter.com (O.E.D. Archive) Thank GOD Warwick Mop is over for another year!

1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory ii. 122/2 Crows, Pies,..Titmouses, Mopps, &c. do much hurt in Orchards.

1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory ii. 243/1 This..we in our Countrey call Tittimous, or Mop.

1943 in R. S. Gold Jazz Talk (1975) 183 (title of tune) Mop mop.]

1945 L. Shelly Hepcats Jive Talk Dict. 15 Mop, the finale.

1947 Britannica Bk. of Year 840/2 Mop, slang, a word connoting surprise, anguish; a mild sort of ‘hubba, hubba, hubba’ (1944).

1952 B. Ulanov Hist. Jazz in Amer. xxv. 349 (Gloss.) Such words as ‘mop!’ an exclamation of wide currency in the early forties which accurately described a musical device (the final beat in a cadence of triplets, usually bringing the release of a jazz composition to an end).

1959 Village Voice (N.Y.) 28 Oct. 13 I wait a while, eyes closed, and I look, mop! I'm in the bathtub, all alone.

1970 C. Major Dict. Afro-Amer. Slang 82 Mop, the last beat at the end of a jazz number with a cadence of triplets.

1986 R. L. Chapman New Dict. Amer. Slang (1987) 282/2 And the mop was he got caught.

c1425 (c1400) Laud Troy-bk. 18204 (MED) The knyghtes that were In that hors stopped, Thei were nother mased ne mopped.

a1450 in R. Morris Legends Holy Rood (1871) 216 Oure lady..lay still, doted and dased, As a womman mapped and mased.

1567 A. Golding tr. Ovid Metamorphosis (new ed.) xiv. f. 174^v Too moppe and mowe, but not too speake.

1583 A. Golding tr. J. Calvin Serm. on Deuteronomie xxiii. 138 Whensoeuer a Crucifix stands mopping & mowing [Fr. quand vn crucifix fera la mouë] in the Church [etc.].

1606 B. Rich Faultes 7 Marke but his countenance, see how hee mops, and how he mowes.

1655 tr. C. Sorel Comical Hist. Francion iv. 17 Fremond, drawing her mouth an inch and a half wider than ordinary, and mopping at him [etc.].

1692 R. L'Estrange Fables x. 9 An Asse was so Hardy once, as to fall a Mopping and Braying at a Lyon.

1823 Ld. Byron Island iv. vii. 66 Fantastic faces moped and mowed on high.

1856 C. Merivale Hist. Romans under Empire V. l. 602 He mops and mows, and shakes his palsied head.

1931 M. Summers Supernatural Omnibus 10 Pale spectres who peer in through the windows, who mop and mow at the lattice.

1969 W. H. Auden City without Walls 91 Mopped and mowed at, as their train worms through a tunnel.

1994 A. S. Byatt in Daily Tel. 15 Jan. 11/2 Puppets and shadow-puppets mop and mow.

1859 All Year Round 23 July 306/1 Winterbourn ‘mopped up’ two or three more, was bowled out, and then Southey joined me.

1898 T. Troubridge in W. A. Morgan ‘House’ on Sport 393 The birds..come over in one's and two's, and are ‘mopped up’.

1899 H. R. Haggard Farmer's Year 387 Afterwards this reverend gentleman very nearly slew me also in mopping up a low pheasant.

1901 Westm. Gaz. 18 Dec. 7/2 It is not to be expected..that a force, however large, will be able to ‘mop up’..a far smaller body of Boers in a short time.

1915 A. Huxley Let. Dec. (1969) 88 It is up to you..to roll in the Texan subscriptions, while our agents..are..to mop up other corners of the dark continent.

1938 Sun (Baltimore) 31 Oct. 4/1 Three fires..were reported to be under control with the fire-fighters ‘mopping up’ today.

1942 R.A.F. Jrnl. 30 May 33 The enemy was still fighting behind us but they would be mopped up in time.

1970 Toronto Daily Star 24 Sept. 1/7 King's troops were pursuing the fleeing rebels, mopping up.

1984 Which? Apr. 183/1 After we had finished our tests, our engineers mopped up the tuning problems the garages and tuners hadn't fixed.

1861 H. Mayhew London Labour (new ed.) III. 203/1 If I gets inside, I'll mop up 1s. if it's good company.

1890 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Miner's Right II. xv. 64 It seems they have been mopping up some rich surfacing.

1973 Times 27 Dec. 11/1 The Bank of England ‘mopped up’ a large surplus by selling Treasury bills to both houses and banks.

1978 Times 17 Aug. 21/3 Then the Bank mopped up.

1991 Sun 16 Dec. 13/2 Daily home help Sheila Brooker mopped up £25,000 on Sun Bingo yesterday.

1997 Media Work 16 May 8/5 In terms of radio listening, BBC network radio mopped up the lion's share of audience.