hopper1
/ˈhɒpə
/noun
1A container for a loose bulk material such as grain, rock, or rubbish, typically one that tapers downward and is able to discharge its contents at the bottom: the lorries waited under the hoppers to pick up their loads...
- Most of them are unit trains of grain hoppers or container trains.
- The outlets on the bottom of the individual hoppers are controlled by a rod that runs the length of the trailer.
- Material is pumped from the sea bed as a fluid mixture with water and is discharged into the dredger's hoppers where the heavy material rapidly sinks to the bottom.
1.1chiefly historical A tapering container, working with a hopping motion, through which grain passed into a mill.Grooves were cut into the cylinder to allow seed to pass from the hopper above to a funnel below.
1.2A railway wagon able to discharge coal or other bulk material through its floor: a train of empty iron-ore hoppers...
- There was a lot of freight switching for the local peddler to do here at White Sulphur, as there was everywhere, with stock pens in the early years, and LCL freight in box cars, and coal hoppers.
- Workers there build and repair different types of rail cars, including coal hoppers, gondolas, and cars that carry steel coils.
- Adjoining the coaling plant there is a sand storage bin, from which the sand is elevated into hoppers on the coal hopper frame for feeding into the locomotive.
1.3A barge for carrying away mud or sediment from a dredging machine and discharging it: [as modifier]: a hopper barge...
- The transport vessels are trailing suction hopper dredges with barges.
- One firm sent its lighters, the London County Council dispatched its hopper barges, and the Port of London nine of its tugs which towed Thames sailing barges behind them.
- One man survived the blast and dragged himself into the hopper barge.
1.4 (also hopper head) A container at the top of a vertical pipe which receives water from a gutter or waste pipe.The inner east elevation contains a playful geometric pattern of drainage hoppers with diagonal gutters that carry rainwater down to ground level.
2A person or thing that hops: [in combination]: island-hoppers...
- They are excellent hoppers, fleeing from predators with long bounds.
- It's a coastal cruiser, an island hopper, or a gunkholer.
- Then you continue three hours on to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, and catch a 45-minute hopper flight to Lijiang, an aging hamlet with old stone houses and cobblestone streets.
2.1A hopping insect, especially a young locust.FAO has warned from Rome that Senegal faces a new wave of swarms and what scientists call hoppers, newly-hatched wingless locusts, which have been spotted along the Senegal River valley and Ferlo valley....
- The new control method uses a natural fungus, called Metarhizium anisopliae, which infects locust hoppers in such a way that they stop feeding and die in one to three weeks.
- It's also the hopper season, so grasshoppers and caddis patterns are the usual fare.
Rhymes
hopper2
/ˈhɒpə/noun
A person who picks hops.The appalling conditions of the ‘hoppers of Kent’ are proof that poverty in Victorian England was not restricted to urban areas.