Stoppe means to stop, and it is the workhorse verb for halting — buses, cars, machines, and people. It works both ways: a bus stops on its own (intransitive), and you stop a car (transitive), using the same verb. The construction to nail down is stoppe med at + infinitive for stop doing something, where English speakers tend to drop the med out of habit.
Principal parts
| Infinitive | Present | Past | Past participle | Imperative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (at) stoppe | stopper | stoppede | stoppet | stop! |
Stoppe is a regular weak verb of the -ede / -et type. The doubled -pp- in every form is just Danish spelling keeping the preceding vowel short — pronounce the o as a short, clipped vowel.
Intransitive and transitive in one verb
This is the most useful thing to understand about stoppe: a single verb covers both something stops and someone stops something. English does the same ("the bus stops" / "stop the bus"), so this should feel natural — but it is worth seeing both side by side. Verbs that flip between these two roles without changing form are called labile verbs, and Danish has many of them; stoppe is a textbook example. The grammar does not mark the difference at all — word order and context do. If stoppe has a direct object after it (stop bilen), it is transitive; if it stands alone (bilen stopper), it is intransitive.
Intransitive — the subject comes to a halt on its own:
Bussen stopper lige uden for stationen.
The bus stops right outside the station.
Toget stoppede pludseligt midt på broen.
The train stopped suddenly in the middle of the bridge.
Transitive — the subject brings something else to a halt:
Stop bilen, jeg skal lige ud!
Stop the car, I need to get out!
Politiet stoppede os ved grænsen.
The police stopped us at the border.
The imperative: Stop!
The bare imperative Stop! is one of the first Danish words you will ever hear shouted. It is the verb stem with no ending, exactly like the English command. It works as a standalone exclamation and as a transitive order (Stop bilen!).
Stop! Du kører for stærkt.
Stop! You're driving too fast.
The present perfect: er/har stoppet
Here the labile nature of stoppe shows up in the auxiliary. When stoppe is transitive — you stopped something — the perfect takes har: jeg har stoppet maskinen. But when it is intransitive and describes a change of state — the bus came to a halt and now stands still — Danish prefers være, exactly as it does for er holdt op and other "now-in-a-new-state" verbs: bussen er stoppet. So the auxiliary itself tells you which reading is meant.
Regnen er holdt op, og bussen er stoppet.
The rain has let up, and the bus has stopped.
Hvorfor har du stoppet maskinen?
Why have you stopped the machine?
The key construction: stoppe med at + infinitive
To say stop doing something, Danish uses stoppe med at followed by an infinitive. The little word med (literally "with") is obligatory, and it is exactly what English speakers leave out, because English just says "stop doing" with no preposition.
Han stoppede med at ryge sidste år.
He stopped smoking last year.
Kan du ikke stoppe med at larme?
Can't you stop making noise?
The reason the med is there is worth understanding rather than just memorising. In Danish, stoppe with a following med at literally frames the activity as something you stop along with — you cease your involvement with doing it. English collapses all of that into the bare gerund "stop smoking," with no preposition and no infinitive marker, so an English speaker's instinct is to say stoppe ryge or stoppe at ryge. Both are wrong; Danish needs the full frame stoppe med at + the plain infinitive. Burn the three little words med at into the pattern and this error disappears.
A very common near-synonym for this meaning is holde op med at (to quit / leave off doing something). The two are largely interchangeable in everyday speech, though holde op med leans slightly more toward giving something up for good. Note that holde op uses the very same med at frame — further proof that the preposition belongs to the construction, not to one particular verb.
Jeg holdt op med at drikke kaffe om aftenen.
I quit drinking coffee in the evenings.
Useful collocations
| Danish | English |
|---|---|
| stoppe med at + infinitive | to stop doing something |
| holde op med at + infinitive | to quit / give up doing something |
| stoppe op | to pause, to come to a halt (and reflect) |
| stoppe en taxa | to flag down / hail a taxi |
| et stop | a stop (the noun) |
A short dialogue
— Hvornår stopper bussen ved torvet?
— When does the bus stop at the square?
— Den stopper hvert tiende minut. Men du skal stoppe med at vente her — stoppestedet er ovre på den anden side.
— It stops every ten minutes. But you need to stop waiting here — the bus stop is over on the other side.
Common mistakes
❌ Han stoppede ryge sidste år.
Incorrect — 'stop doing' needs 'med at' before the infinitive.
✅ Han stoppede med at ryge sidste år.
He stopped smoking last year.
❌ Kan du stoppe at larme?
Incorrect — missing 'med'; this is the most common English-speaker error with stoppe.
✅ Kan du stoppe med at larme?
Can you stop making noise?
❌ Chaufføren holdt bilen ved lyskrydset.
Misleading — 'holde' means to hold; for bringing a car to a stop you want stoppe or standse.
✅ Chaufføren stoppede bilen ved lyskrydset.
The driver stopped the car at the traffic light.
❌ Bussen stoppte midt på vejen.
Incorrect — the past is stoppede (with -ede), not stoppte.
✅ Bussen stoppede midt på vejen.
The bus stopped in the middle of the road.
Key takeaways
- Stoppe is a regular weak verb: stoppe / stopper / stoppede / stoppet; imperative Stop!
- One verb, two roles: intransitive (bussen stopper) and transitive (stop bilen).
- Stop doing something = stoppe med at
- infinitive — never drop the med.
- Holde op med at is a close synonym; standse is the more formal "halt."
For a side-by-side on when to use standse, stoppe, or holde op, see standse, stoppe, holde op. For the command form, see the imperative.
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Start learning Danish→Related Topics
- Standse, Stoppe, Holde Op: StoppingB1 — A decision guide for the three Danish verbs meaning 'stop' — standse (halt, of motion), stoppe (stop/plug), and holde op med (stop doing an activity).
- The ImperativeA1 — How to give commands, requests and suggestions in Danish — the bare-stem imperative, polite softeners, and the idiomatic 'don't' with lad være med at.
- At (to) vs At (that)C1 — Danish has two words spelled at — the infinitive marker 'to' and the complementiser 'that'. A decision test plus the spoken og/at trap that catches even natives.