trap

Leghold trap

Meanings

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.
  • A trick or arrangement designed to catch someone in a more general sense; a snare.
  • A covering over a hole or opening; a trapdoor.
  • A kind of movable stepladder or set of stairs.
  • A wooden instrument shaped somewhat like a shoe, used in the game of trapball.
  • The game of trapball itself.
  • Any device used to hold and suddenly release an object.
  • A bend, sag, or other device in a waste-pipe arranged so that the liquid contents form a seal which prevents the escape of noxious gases, but permits the flow of liquids.
  • A place in a water pipe, pump, etc., where air accumulates for lack of an outlet.
  • A successful landing on an aircraft carrier using the carrier's arresting gear.
  • A light two-wheeled carriage with springs.
  • A person's mouth.
  • Belongings.
  • A cubicle (in a public toilet).
  • Trapshooting.
  • A geological structure that creates a petroleum reservoir.
  • An exception generated by the processor or by an external event.
  • A mining license inspector during the Australian gold rush.
  • A vehicle, residential building, or sidewalk corner where drugs are manufactured, packaged, or sold.
  • Someone who is anatomically male but who passes as female.
  • 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.
  • A genre of hip-hop music, with half-time drums and heavy sub-bass.
  • The money earned by a prostitute for a pimp.
  • An area, especially of a city, with a low level of opportunity and a high level of poverty and crime; A ghetto; A hood.
  • A dark coloured igneous rock, now used to designate any non-granitic igneous rock; trap rock.
  • The trapezius muscle.

Verb

  • To physically capture, to catch in a trap or traps, or something like a trap.
  • To ensnare; to take by stratagem; to entrap.
  • To provide with a trap.
  • To set traps for game; to make a business of trapping game.
  • To successfully land an aircraft on an aircraft carrier using the carrier's arresting gear.
  • To leave suddenly, to flee.
  • To sell illegal drugs, especially in a public area.
  • To capture (e.g. an error) in order to handle or process it.
  • To attend to and open and close a (trap-)door.
  • Of a 'trap': to trick a (heterosexual) man into becoming aroused, by appearing to be a woman.
  • To dress with ornaments; to adorn (especially said of horses).

Related

Opposite words

Origin

  • From Middle English trappe, from Old English træppe, treppe (also in betræppan) from Proto-Germanic *trap-, from Proto-Indo-European *drem- ("to run").
  • Akin to Old High German trappa, trapa, Middle Dutch trappe ("trap, snare"), Middle Low German treppe ("step, stair") (German Treppe "step, stair"), Old English treppan ("to step, tread") and possibly Albanian trap ("raft, channel, path"). Connection to "step" is "that upon which one steps". and are ultimately borrowings from Germanic.
  • Borrowed from Swedish trapp, from Middle Low German trappe.
  • Akin to Middle English trappe, and perhaps from Old Northern French trape, a byform of Old French drap, a word of the same origin as English drab.
  • Shortening.

Modern English dictionary

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