Definitions for: Sap


[n] a piece of metal covered by leather with a flexible handle; used for hitting people
[n] a person who lacks good judgment
[n] a watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant
[v] excavate the earth beneath
[v] deplete; "exhaust one's savings"; "We quickly played out our strength"



Webster (1913) Definition: Sap, n. [AS. s[ae]p; akin to OHG. saf, G. saft, Icel.
safi; of uncertain origin; possibly akin to L. sapere to
taste, to be wise, sapa must or new wine boiled thick. Cf.
Sapid, Sapient.]
1. The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending
and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to
nutrition.

Note: The ascending is the crude sap, the assimilation of
which takes place in the leaves, when it becomes the
elaborated sap suited to the growth of the plant.

2. The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.

3. A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop. [Slang]

Sap ball (Bot.), any large fungus of the genus Polyporus.
See Polyporus.

Sap green, a dull light green pigment prepared from the
juice of the ripe berries of the Rhamnus catharticus, or
buckthorn. It is used especially by water-color artists.


Sap rot, the dry rot. See under Dry.

Sap sucker (Zo["o]l.), any one of several species of small
American woodpeckers of the genus Sphyrapicus,
especially the yellow-bellied woodpecker (S. varius) of
the Eastern United States. They are so named because they
puncture the bark of trees and feed upon the sap. The name
is loosely applied to other woodpeckers.

Sap tube (Bot.), a vessel that conveys sap.


Sap, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sapped; p. pr. & vb. n.
Sapping.] [F. saper (cf. Sp. zapar, It. zapare), fr. sape a
sort of scythe, LL. sappa a sort of mattock.]
1. To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to
undermine; to destroy the foundation of.

Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapped by floods,
Their houses fell upon their household gods.
--Dryden.

2. (Mil.) To pierce with saps.

3. To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind. --Tennyson.


Sap, v. i.
To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute
saps. --W. P. Craighill.

Both assaults are carried on by sapping. --Tatler.


Sap, n. (Mil.)
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.

Sap fagot (Mil.), a fascine about three feet long, used in
sapping, to close the crevices between the gabions before
the parapet is made.

Sap roller (Mil.), a large gabion, six or seven feet long,
filled with fascines, which the sapper sometimes rolls
along before him for protection from the fire of an enemy.

Synonyms: blackjack, cosh, exhaust, fool, muggins, play out, run down, saphead, tire, tomfool

See Also: ass, bludgeon, bozo, buffoon, cave, clown, consume, cuckoo, deplete, eat, eat up, fathead, flibbertigibbet, foolish woman, fucker, goof, goose, jackass, manna, meshuggener, morosoph, run through, simple, simpleton, solution, twat, undermine, use up, Wally, wipe out, zany

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