What does "hopscotch" mean?

A child's game, in which a player, hopping on one foot, drives a stone from one compartment to another of a figure traced or scotched on the ground.

What is a synonym for "hopscotch"?

Common synonyms include: bingo, checkers, chess, game, hopper, hoppers.

Pronounced //ˈhɑpˌskɑt͡ʃ//.

//ˈhɑpˌskɑt͡ʃ// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A child's game, in which a player, hopping on one foot, drives a stone from one compartment to another of a figure traced or scotched on the ground. uncountable
"No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten pickeystone."
2
a game in which a child tosses a stone into an area drawn on the ground and then hops through it and back to regain the stone wordnet

Verb

1
To move by hopping. figuratively, intransitive
"As he hopscotched around the world on his Gulfstream IV — he got rid of his homes but kept his private plane — he found himself spending more and more time in Los Angeles, and he also rediscovered his interest in politics and philosophy."
2
To move back and forth between adjacent patterns by or as if by hopping. figuratively, intransitive
"Although the events described hop-scotch back and forth in time, the story moves along in an orderly fasion ^([sic]) and is rarely rambling."

""Let's play hopscotch," said the little white rabbit."

From hop + scotch (“scratch”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.