hoover

See also:Hoover

English

WOTD – 18 August 2016

A Hoover Junior vacuum cleaner from the collection ofThinktank, Birmingham Science Museum,inBirminghamin theWest Midlands,England,United Kingdom

Alternative forms

• Hoover

Etymology

Genericized trademarkofHoover,the brand name of one of the first vacuum cleaners, which was sold byThe Hoover Company.The American company was founded byWilliam Henry Hoover(1849–1932) and his sonHerbert William Hoover, Sr.(1877–1954). The surnameHooveris an Anglicized version of theGermanHuber,originally designating a landowner or a prosperous small-scale farmer.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation)IPA^(key):/ˈhuːvə(ɹ)/
• (General American)IPA^(key):/ˈhuvɚ/

• Audio(General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes:-uːvə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation:hoo‧ver

Noun

hoover(pluralhoovers)

1. (chieflyBritish,Ireland)Avacuum cleaner,irrespective of brand.
   • 2006,William Houston,Party Tricks for Dogs,Victoria, B.C.:Trafford Publishing,→ISBN:

     "What do you do about dogs that don't likeHoovers?"[…]At the first opportunity place theHooverin the area where your dog is lying calmly, and since it is normally the noise that sends it into those fits of anger, it should be unconcerned with a silent machine. Continue to place theHooverin those areas that your pet is relaxing until it is familiar with theHooverbeing in such close proximity.[…]By continuing to distract your pet each time theHooveris switched on but stationary, you should be able to move it a little closer without causing your pet any alarm.

   • 2011,Terry Jones,Evil Machines,Clerkenwell, London:Unbound,→ISBN:

     And the brooms lined up behind the buckets, and the dusters, dustpans, cloths and brushes, feather dusters and sweepers all lined up bravely to do battle with the thousand uprightHoovers.TheHooverscharged, engines roaring and bags fully inflated.

   • 2014,Guy Browning,How to Be Normal: A Guide for the Perplexed,London:Atlantic Books,→ISBN:

     Vacuuming the house is a very quick way of sprucing it up simply because you can use thehooverto push everything out of the way. Cleaning an average-size room is also the exercise equivalent of ten minutes on the Nordic Skier, while changing thehooverbag is the mental equivalent of doing a Rubik's cube in a dust storm.

Translations

vacuum cleaner—seevacuum cleaner

Verb

hoover(third-person singular simple presenthoovers,present participlehoovering,simple past and past participlehoovered)

1. (transitive,intransitive,British,Ireland)To clean (a room, etc.) with avacuum cleaner,irrespective of brand.

   I need tohooverthis room.

   • 2000,Tanya David, Dennis Pepper, comp., “Dogends”, inThe New Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories,Oxford:Oxford University Press,→ISBN,pages30–31:

     This time Robbie was dreaming about Mr Spatchley's ducks. They had all come alive and were flying around the office whilst Robbie desperately tried tohooverthe floor. There were ducks everywhere, on the desk and mantelpiece and padding around on the floor, knocking things over and quacking indignantly.

   • 2006,Stella Rimington,Secret Asset,London:Hutchinson,ISBN978-0-09-180024-6;republished New York, N.Y.:Vintage Crime/Black Lizard,2008,ISBN978-1-4000-7982-7,page 210:

     In the freshlyhooveredliving room of her house in Wokingham, Thelma Dawnton was distinctly miffed.

   • 2009,Ariel Leve,The Cassandra Chronicles,London: Portobello,→ISBN:

     In honour of my visit, he'd gotten rid of 'most' of the cobwebs, and washed andhooveredthe walls next to the bed.Hooveredthe walls? What sort of creatures were living in the gaps in the stone that would need to behooveredout?

   • 2015,Kes Gray,Daisy and the Trouble with Piggy Banks,London: Red Fox,→ISBN:

     After I'd eaten my dinner on Saturday, Mum said I could start earning some money byhooveringthe lounge. She got the hoover out, plugged it in and said that she would come and inspect the carpet after she had finished clearing the dinner things away.[…]I had started offhooveringthe carpet, but after about twelve pushes I got a bit bored.

2. (intransitive,British,Ireland)To use a vacuum cleaner, irrespective of brand.

   My husband is upstairs,hoovering.

   • 2001,Ali Smith,Hotel World,London:Hamish Hamilton,→ISBN:

     […]she was always in trouble for nothooveringbehind the bed picked up what I could of it still there after hehoovered[…]

   • 2005,Ally Fogg, Phil Korbel, Cathy Brooks, Steve Lee, “Money and Monitoring”, inCommunity Radio Toolkit,Manchester:Radio Regen,→ISBN,page78:

     A woman from a funding agency visited the station for a meeting early one morning, and when she arrived I was doing thehoovering.My colleague introduced us and we chatted for a bit. Then she asked me what my job was and I told her 'station manager'. She looked really puzzled, and asked 'so why are you doing thehoovering?' I answered, 'because the floor was dirty.'

   • 2007,Olivia Liberty,Falling,London: Atlantic Books,→ISBN:

     Up and down the wooden stairs of the house in Cambridge large balls of dust and dog hair bounced. Toby wondered whether John Lambert III, if he'd stuck around, would havehoovered.The hoover stopped and the man wound in the cord, admiring his handiwork. The silence pounded against Toby's eardrums. It seemed that real menhoovered.

3. (transitive)To suck in orinhale,as if by a vacuum cleaner.
   • 1989,Grant Naylor,Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers:

     'You're probably thinking I'm a slob,' said Lister, finishing off a quintuple-thick milkshake andhooveringaround the base with the straw.

   • 1998,Bill Bryson,chapter 1, inA Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail,New York, N.Y.:Anchor Books,→ISBN,page 8:

     Then there is the little-known family of organisms called hantaviruses, which swarm in the micro-haze above the feces of mice and rats and arehooveredinto the human respiratory system by anyone unlucky enough to stick a breathing orifice near them—by lying down, say, on a sleeping platform over which infected mice have recently scampered.

   • 2003,Thomas E. Downing, “Lessons from Famine Early Warning and Food Security for Understanding Adaptation to Climate Change: Toward a Vulnerability/Adaptation Science?”, inJoel B. Smith,Richard J. T. Klein,Saleemul Huq,editors,Climate Change, Adaptive Capacity and Development,London:Imperial College Press,→ISBN,pages72–73:

     The early models of famine early warning systems adopted the approach of gathering all possible (or measurable) indicators, adding them up and deducing vulnerability. This was termed thehooveringapproach—vulnerability was the weight of the bag after vacuuming up everything in sight (hooveringis the British word for vacuuming).

   • 2016,Al Bolea, Leanne Atwater,Applied Leadership Development: Nine Elements of Leadership Mastery(Leadership: Research and Practice Series), New York, N.Y., Hove, East Sussex:Routledge,→ISBN:

     We devoured the food, and all along we three boys were bubbling with excitement, telling Mom about the hole. As Dad "hoovered"away, slurping, chewing, gulping, and snorting, Rudy said," Mom, you would not believe the hole; it's beautiful. Jeffrey designed it and we dug it together... even Berto helped. "

Synonyms

• (transitive sense):tovacuum

Derived terms

• hoover up

Translations

vacuum—seevacuum

References

• “hoover”,inDictionary.com Unabridged,Dictionary.com, LLC,1995–present.