hop

hop, herbaceous perennial vine of the family Moraceae (mulberry family), widely cultivated since early times for brewing purposes. The commercial hop (Humulus lupulus) is native to Eurasia but is now grown in many temperate regions, notably England, Germany, the United States, South America, and Australia. The conelike mature female flowers, called hops, are borne on different plants from the male; their loose scales contain lupulin, a yellow resinous powder that is added to beer to impart a bitter flavor and is used medicinally as a tonic and soporific. Oil of hops is used for some perfumes, and the hop stem is used for fiber. The fruit of the unrelated hop tree (Ptelea trifoliata) of North America is occasionally used as a substitute for hops. Hops are classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Urticales, family Moraceae.

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hop

Hop vine (Humulus lupulus) with female flowers (cones), which are used …

(credit: Grant Heilman)

In botany, either of two species of the genus Humulus, nonwoody annual or perennial vines in the hemp family, native to temperate North America, Eurasia, and South America. The hops used in the brewery industry (see beer) are the dried female flower clusters (cones) of the common hop (H. lupulus), a long-lived perennial with rough twining stems. Hops impart a mellow bitterness and delicate aroma to brewed beverages and aid in their preservation. The Japanese hop (H. japonicus) is a quick-growing annual species used as a screening vine.

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hop

The link between two network nodes. See hop count and hop off.

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hop¹

Old-fashioned informal a dance, esp one at which popular music is played

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hop²

Obsolete slang opium or any other narcotic drug

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hop³

1. any climbing plant of the N temperate genus Humulus, esp H. lupulus, which has green conelike female flowers and clusters of small male flowers: family Cannabiaceae (or Cannabidaceae)

2. hop garden a field of hops

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hop [häp]

(botany)

Humulus lupulus.A dioecious liana of the order Urticales distinguished by herbaceous vines produced from a perennial crown; the inflorescence, a catkin, of the female plant is used commercially for beer production.

(communications)

A single reflection of a radio wave from the ionosphere back to the earth in traveling from one point to another.

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1.	(messaging)	hop - One point-to-point transmission in a series required to get a message from point A to point B on a store and forward network. On such networks (including UUCPNET and FidoNet), an important inter-machine metric is the hop count of the shortest path between them. This can be more significant than their geographical separation. Each exclamation mark in a bang path represents one hop.
2.	(networking)	hop - One direct host-to-host connection forming part of the route between two hosts in a routed network such as the Internet. Some protocols place an upper limit on the hop count in order to detect routing loops.
3.	(jargon, networking)	hop - To log in to a remote computer, especially via rlogin or telnet. "I'll hop over to foovax to FTP that."