trap
UK [t̠ɹ̠̊˔ap] · US [t̠ɹ̠̊˔æp] noun, verb
- noun A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body. “I put down some traps in my apartment to try and deal with the mouse problem.”
- noun A trick or arrangement designed to catch someone in a more general sense; a snare. “Unfortunately she fell into the trap of confusing biology with destiny.”
- noun (by extension, cartography, law, technical) A (usually fictional) location or feature originally added to a map to detect plagiarism and copyright violations by other map makers or map services. “trap street”
- noun (slang, informal, usually offensive, sometimes derogatory) Someone with male-typical anatomy who passes as female.
- noun (slang, informal, sometimes considered offensive) A fictional character from anime, or related media, who is coded as or has qualities typically associated with a gender other than the character's ostensible gender; otokonoko, josou.
- noun (computing) An exception generated by the processor or by an external event.
- noun Any device used to hold and suddenly release an object. “They shot out of the school gates like greyhounds out of the trap.”
- noun A covering over a hole or opening; a trapdoor. “Close the trap, would you, before someone falls and breaks their neck.”
- verb (transitive) To physically capture, to catch in a trap or traps, or something like a trap. “to trap foxes”
- verb (transitive) To ensnare; to take by stratagem; to entrap. “Be careful not to trap your finger in the door.”
- verb (transitive) To provide with a trap. “to trap a drain”
- verb (intransitive) To set traps for game; to make a business of trapping game; to travel for the purpose of trapping. “trap for beaver”
- verb (aviation, military, slang, intransitive) To successfully land an aircraft on an aircraft carrier using the carrier's arresting gear. “After three consecutive bolters, the pilot finally trapped successfully on the Nimitz.”
- verb (intransitive) To leave suddenly, to flee.
- verb (computing, intransitive) To capture (e.g. an error) in order to handle or process it.
- verb (mining, dated) To attend to and open and close a (trap-)door.
- noun A dark coloured igneous rock; (now usually) any nongranitic igneous rock.
- verb To dress with ornaments; to adorn (especially said of horses). “She was all trapped out in the gaudiest of clothes.”
- noun (slang, bodybuilding, anatomy) The trapezius muscle.
Synonyms
snare fang trap music vagina trap rock traprock ambush ambuscade lying in wait cakehole hole maw yap gob bunker sand trap pin down entrap ensnare trammel pin immobilize immobilise
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English trappe, from Old English træppe, treppe (“trap, snare”) (also in betræppan (“to trap”)) from Proto-West Germanic *trappjā (“trap, snare”), from Proto-West Germanic *trappjan (“to step”), from Proto-Germanic *trapjaną (“to tread, stamp”), from Proto-Indo-European *drebʰ- (“to step, trip, trample”).
Cognate with Dutch trap (“step, stair”), German Low German Trapp (“step, stair”). Akin also to West Frisian traap (“stepping, treading, stairway”), German Treppe (“step, stair”), Old English træppan (“to step, tread”). Connection to "step" is "that upon which one steps". French trappe and Spanish trampa are ultimately borrowings from Germanic.
Borrowed from Swedish trapp (“step, stair, stairway”), from Middle Low German trappe (“stair, step”).
Akin to Middle English trappe (“trappings, gear”), and perhaps from Old Northern French trape, a byform of Old French drap, a word of the same origin as English drab (“a kind of cloth”).
Clipping of trapezius.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To dress with ornaments; to adorn; --said especially of horses.
- noun An old term rather loosely used to designate various dark-colored, heavy igneous rocks, including especially the feldspathic-augitic rocks, basalt, dolerite, amygdaloid, etc., but including also some kinds of diorite. Called also trap rock. Trap tufa, Trap tuff, a kind of fragmental rock made up of fragments and earthy materials from trap rocks.
- adjective Of or pertaining to trap rock; as, a trap dike.
- noun A machine or contrivance that shuts suddenly, as with a spring, used for taking game or other animals; as, a trap for foxes.
Etymology [Akin to OE. trappe trappings, and perhaps from an Old French word of the same origin as E. drab a kind of cloth.]
Etymology [Sw. trapp; akin to trappa stairs, Dan. trappe, G. treppe, D. trap; -- so called because the rocks of this class often occur in large, tabular masses, rising above one another, like steps. See Tramp.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “trap”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details