Sap
WordNet
noun
(1) A piece of metal covered by leather with a flexible handle; used for hitting people
(2) A person who lacks good judgment
(3) A watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant
verb
(4) Excavate the earth beneath
(5) Deplete
"Exhaust one's savings"
"We quickly played out our strength"
WiktionaryText
Etymology 1
From , from West . Cognate with German , Dutch , Icelandic ; of uncertain ultimate origin, perhaps compare Latin , ; see also , .
Noun
- The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition.
- The sap-wood, or alburnum, of a tree.
- A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop; a naive person.
Noun
Verb
- To strike with a sap (with a blackjack).
Etymology 3
From (compare Spanish and Italian ) from , from .
Noun
- A narrow ditch or trench made from the foremost parallel toward the glacis or covert way of a besieged place by digging under cover of gabions, etc.
Verb
- To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of.
- John Dryden
- Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapped by floods, / Their houses fell upon their household gods.
- John Dryden
- To pierce with saps.
- To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.
- 1850, Alfred Tennyson, Ring, Out, Wild Bells
- Ring out the grief that saps the mind,/
- 1850, Alfred Tennyson, Ring, Out, Wild Bells
- To gradually weaken.
- to sap one’s conscience
- To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps — 12
- The Tatler
- Both assaults carried on by sapping.
- The Tatler