trapan
Plural: trapans
Noun
- An act of entrapping or tricking; an entrapment; also, a thing which entraps or tricks; a snare or trap; a stratagem or trick.
- A person (or occasionally an animal) that traps or tricks another into doing something that benefits them but harms the victim; a fraudster, a swindler, a trickster.
- Alternative spelling of trepan (“surgical instrument used to remove a small section of bone, usually from the skull; tool used to bore through rock, etc.”).
Verb
Verb Forms: trapanned, trapanning, trapans
- To trepan; to bore a hole in the skull with a trepan.
- To catch or entrap (a person or animal) in a snare or trap; to ensnare, to trap.
- To trap or trick (someone), especially by using some stratagem, into doing something that benefits the perpetrator but harms the victim; to defraud, to ensnare, to entrap, to swindle.
- Alternative spelling of trepan (“to cut through bone, usually the skull, using a trepan (etymology 2, noun sense); to create a large hole by making a narrow groove outlining the shape of the hole and then removing the plug of material”)
Examples
- He felt like he had to TRAPAN his brain for more words after a long game.
Origin / Etymology
The origin of the noun is uncertain; sense 2 (“person that traps or tricks another”), the original sense, was probably thieves’ cant and may be derived from trap (noun or verb). Sense 1 (“act of entrapping or tricking; thing which entraps or tricks”) is from the verb.
The verb is derived from sense 2 of the noun.
Synonyms
Scandaroon, bunco-steerer, charlatan, cheat, cheater, chiseler, cozener, defrauder, finagler, fleecer, fraud, fraudmeister, fraudster, goldbrick, grifter, gull, gyp, humbug, landshark, pickpenny, rook, scammer, scamp, schemester, sharper, slicker, spieler, swindler, trapan, trepan
Scrabble Score: 8
trapan: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordtrapan: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
trapan: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary