'Stop' originally meant 'to plug up' — from Greek 'styppe' (tow). Physical plugging became cessation.
To cease moving or operating; to bring to an end; to prevent from continuing.
From Old English 'stoppian' meaning 'to stop up, plug, close (an opening),' from a West Germanic borrowing of Vulgar Latin *stuppāre (to stop up with tow), from Latin 'stuppa' (tow, coarse fiber), from Greek 'styppē' (tow, oakum). The original meaning was exclusively physical — to plug a hole with fibrous material. The abstract meaning of 'to cease, to halt' did not develop until the fourteenth century, arising from the metaphor of blocking a flow. Key
The word 'stop' originally had nothing to do with halting — it meant to stuff a hole with tow (coarse fiber). Sailors 'stopped' leaks in ship hulls by plugging them with oakum. The leap from plugging a physical hole to halting an abstract process is one of the most dramatic semantic shifts in English, turning a maritime repair term into the universal word for cessation.