sap

Meanings

Noun

• 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

• To drain, suck or absorb from (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.

Origin

• From Middle English sap, from Old English sæp ("juice, sap"), from Proto-West Germanic *sap ("sap, juice") (compare Dutch sap, German Saft, Icelandic safi), from Proto-Indo-European *sab-, *sap- (compare Welsh sybwydd ("fir"), Latin sapa ("must, new wine"), Russian со́пли ("snivel"), Armenian համ ("juice, taste"), Avestan 𐬬𐬌𐬱𐬁𐬞𐬀, Sanskrit सबर् ("juice, nectar")). More at sage.
• Probably from sapling.
• From French saper (compare Spanish zapar and Italian zappare) from sape, from Late Latin sappa ("sort of mattock").