sap

Plural: saps

Noun

• a watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant
• a person who lacks good judgment
• a piece of metal covered by leather with a flexible handle; used for hitting people
• The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition.
• The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.
• Any juice.
• Vitality.
• A naive person; a simpleton.
• A short wooden club; a leather-covered hand weapon; a blackjack.
• 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

Verb Forms: sapped, sapping, saps

• To deplete or weaken gradually, often by undermining.
• deplete
• excavate the earth beneath
• To drain, suck or absorb from (a tree, etc.).
• To exhaust the vitality of.
• To strike with a sap (with a blackjack).
• To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of.
• To pierce with saps.
• To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.
• To gradually weaken.
• To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps.
• To strike with a sap (a blackjack)

Examples

• he saps my energy
• He tried to SAP his opponent’s points by blocking all potential bingo lines.
• Look at the sap mowing our lawn while we pretend our own lawnmower is broken.
• to sap one’s conscience

Synonyms

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

Anagrams of sap