“paps” is a form of
pap
/pæp/ noun, verb, adjective, proper noun
Forms paps papping papped
- noun (uncountable) Food in the form of a soft paste, often a porridge, especially as given to very young children. “Pap can be made from bread boiled in milk or water.”
- noun (uncountable, colloquial) Pablum or nonsense.
- noun (South Africa) Porridge. “Pap and wors are traditionally eaten at a braai.”
- noun (Nigeria, West Africa) A fermented cereal pudding made from corn, sorghum, or millet
- noun (informal, derogatory) Support from official patronage. “Treasury pap”
- noun The pulp of fruit.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To feed with pap.
- noun (archaic) A female breast or nipple.
- noun (now rare, archaic) A man's breast.
- noun A rounded, nipple-like hill or peak.
- adjective (South Africa, slang) Weak, feeble; lacking substance.
- adjective (South Africa, slang) Spineless, wet, without character. “He is so pap and boring.”
- adjective (South Africa, slang) Flat. “I got a puncture and the wheel went pap.”
- verb (informal, usually passive voice) To take a surreptitious photograph of (someone, especially a celebrity) without their consent. “Look, that pop star’s been papped in her bikini again!”
- noun (informal) Pa; father.
- proper noun (Singaporean politics, Singlish, derogatory) Pay And Pay (nickname for the People's Action Party)
- noun (organic chemistry) polyfluoroalkyl phosphate ester
- noun (by extension) A positive airway pressure machine, a PAP device.
- verb (acronym, Internet slang, text messaging) Post a picture.
Synonyms
ayr ba baba da dad dada daddio daddy father fatherling governor old man pa papa papa bear papaw pappaw pappy pater patriarch pablum soft diet spoon food nipple mammilla mamilla teat tit
Etymology
From Middle English pap. Related to Middle Low German pappe, Dutch pap, German Pappe (“pap, porridge; wheatpaste; cardboard”), Old French papa/pape, Latin pappa, Bulgarian папам (papam, “to eat”) and Serbo-Croatian папати/papati (“to eat”), among others. The relationships between these words are difficult to reconstruct. The Germanic word is either a borrowing from Latin or, perhaps more probably, an independent formation in baby-talk.
From Middle English pappe, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Latin papilla; or perhaps compare Old Swedish papp (“breast, nipple”), from Proto-Germanic *pap- (“nipple”), of imitative origin, or from Proto-Indo-European *pap- (“pock mark, nipple”); Swedish dialectal papp, pappe, Swedish patt, Danish patte, North Frisian pap, pape, papke (“breast, pap”).
From Afrikaans pap (“porridge”). Cognate with etymology 1.
Clipping of paparazzo.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A nipple; a mammilla; a teat. Dryden.
- noun A rounded, nipplelike hill or peak; anything resembling a nipple in shape; a mamelon. Macaulay.
- noun A soft food for infants, made of bread boiled or softtened in milk or water.
- noun Nourishment or support from official patronage; as, treasury pap. [Colloq. & Contemptuous]
Etymology [Cf. OSw. papp. Cf. Pap soft food.]
Etymology [Cf. D. pap, G. pappe, both perh. fr. L. papa, pappa, the word with which infants call for food: cf. It. pappa.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “pap”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details