A "Hop"

Perhaps some older relations of yours have spoken about dancing at "hops" while they were in high school in the 1950s or 1960s, and perhaps you thought the word "hop" was the product of that era. Actually, the term far predates middle 20th century usage, as seen in this passage from Vol. 1, Chapter 9 of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811: "I remember last Christmas, at a little hop in the park, he danced from eight o'clock till four without once sitting down."