knot vs loop

knot

noun
  • A maze-like pattern. 

  • A looping of a piece of string or of any other long, flexible material that cannot be untangled without passing one or both ends of the material through its loops. 

  • A tangled clump. 

  • Any knob, lump, swelling, or protuberance. 

  • A kind of epaulet; a shoulder knot. 

  • One of a variety of shore birds; red-breasted sandpiper (variously Calidris canutus or Tringa canutus). 

  • A bond of union; a connection; a tie. 

  • A non-self-intersecting closed curve in (e.g., three-dimensional) space that is an abstraction of a knot (in sense 1 above). 

  • A unit of speed, equal to one nautical mile per hour. (From the practice of counting the number of knots in the log-line (as it is paid out) in a standard time. Traditionally spaced at one every ¹⁄₁₂₀ of a mile.) 

  • Local swelling in a tissue area, especially skin, often due to injury. 

  • The bulbus glandis. 

  • The whorl left in lumber by the base of a branch growing out of the tree's trunk. 

  • A difficult situation. 

  • A tightened and contracted part of a muscle that feels like a hard lump under the skin. 

  • A node. 

  • A group of people or things. 

  • A unit of indicated airspeed, calibrated airspeed, or equivalent airspeed, which varies in its relation to the unit of speed so as to compensate for the effects of different ambient atmospheric conditions on aircraft performance. 

  • In omegaverse fiction, a bulbus glandis-like structure on the penis of a male alpha, which ties him to an omega during intercourse. 

  • A nautical mile. 

  • The point on which the action of a story depends; the gist of a matter. 

  • A protuberant joint in a plant. 

  • The swelling of the bulbus glandis in members of the dog family, Canidae. 

verb
  • To form knots. 

  • To form into a knot; to tie with a knot or knots. 

  • To knit knots for a fringe. 

  • To unite closely; to knit together. 

  • To form wrinkles in the forehead, as a sign of concentration, concern, surprise, etc. 

loop

noun
  • A small, narrow opening; a loophole. 

  • A complete circuit for an electric current. 

  • A quasigroup with an identity element. 

  • A ring road or beltway. 

  • The opening so formed. 

  • A loop-shaped intrauterine device. 

  • A flexible region in a protein's secondary structure. 

  • A place at a terminus where trains or trams can turn round and go back the other way without having to reverse; a balloon loop, turning loop, or reversing loop. 

  • An aerobatic maneuver in which an aircraft flies a circular path in a vertical plane. 

  • An endless strip of tape or film allowing continuous repetition. 

  • A length of thread, line or rope that is doubled over to make an opening. 

  • An edge that begins and ends on the same vertex. 

  • A shape produced by a curve that bends around and crosses itself. 

  • A programmed sequence of instructions that is repeated until or while a particular condition is satisfied. 

  • A path that starts and ends at the same point. 

  • A bus or rail route, walking route, etc. that starts and ends at the same point. 

verb
  • To move in a loop. 

  • To move something in a loop. 

  • To place in a loop. 

  • To join electrical components to complete a circuit. 

  • To fly an aircraft in a loop. 

  • To duplicate the route of a pipeline. 

  • To form something into a loop. 

  • To create an error in a computer program so that it runs in an endless loop and the computer freezes up. 

  • To fasten or encircle something with a loop. 

  • To form a loop. 

How often have the words knot and loop occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )