sap Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant
  2. noun a person who lacks good judgment
    fool; saphead; tomfool; muggins.
  3. noun a piece of metal covered by leather with a flexible handle; used for hitting people
    blackjack; cosh.
  4. verb deplete
    exhaust; run down; play out; tire.
    • exhaust one's savings
    • We quickly played out our strength
  5. verb excavate the earth beneath

WordNet

Sap noun
Etymology
AS. sæp; 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.
Definitions
  1. The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition. ✍ 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 transitive verb
Etymology
F. saper (cf. Sp. zapar, It. zapare), fr. sape a sort of scythe, LL. sappa a sort of mattock.
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Saped ; present participle & verbal noun Sapping
Definitions
  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 intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps. W. P. Craighill.
    Both assaults carried on by sapping. Tatler.
Sap noun
Definitions
  1. (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.

Webster 1913