trap
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: trăp
ipa: /tɹæp/
ipa: [t̠ɹ̠̊˔æp]
ipa: [t̠ɹ̠̊˔ap]
ipa: [t̠ɹ̠̊˔äp]
ipa: [t̠ɹ̠̊˔ɛp]
rhymes: -æp
Forms: form: traps
Etymology: From Middle English trappe, from Old English træppe, treppe (“trap, snare”) (also in betræppan (“to trap”)) from Proto-West Germanic *trappjā (“trap, snare”), from Proto-West Germanic *trappjan (“to step”), from Proto-Germanic *trapjaną (“to tread, stamp”), from Proto-Indo-European *drebʰ- (“to step, trip, trample”).
Cognate with Dutch trap (“trap, snare”), German Low German Trapp (“trap”). Akin also to West Frisian traap (“stepping, treading, stairway”), German Treppe (“step, stair”), Old English træppan (“to step, tread”). Connection to "step" is "that upon which one steps". French trappe and Spanish trampa are ultimately borrowings from Germanic.
Senses: examples: text: I put down some traps in my apartment to try and deal with the mouse problem.
text: The Russian bear has always been eager to stick his paw in Latin American waters. Now we've got him in a trap, let's take his leg off right up to his testicles. On second thought, let's take off his testicles, too.
ref: 1995, Richard Rhodes, quoting Curtis LeMay, “Scorpions in a Bottle”, in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 574:
synonyms: snare
glosses: 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.
examples: text: Unfortunately she fell into the trap of confusing biology with destiny.
text: God and your majesty / Protect mine innocence, or I fall into / The trap is laid for me!
ref: 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
glosses: A trick or arrangement designed to catch someone in a more general sense; a snare.
examples: text: trap street
topics: cartography
engineering
geography
law
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
technical
glosses: A trick or arrangement designed to catch someone in a more general sense; a snare.
A (usually fictional) location or feature originally added to a map to detect plagiarism and copyright violations by other map makers or map services.
examples: text: And trust me you don't want to see a trap ether. I like my girls without a ding-a-ling.
ref: 2011 May 27, “Re: anons target US chamber”, in alt.2600 (Usenet):
text: man says he isn't a fag when asking
to masturbate with my body. positions
himself as conqueror, calls my body
trick,
trap,
tranny.
man fucks witch
embarrassed by his own release […]
ref: 2020, jaye simpson, it was never going to be okay, Harbour Publishing, →ISBN:
text: “My son is a tranny.” “No, mother dear, I'm a Trap. There is a difference. You should have knocked before you came in.” 'Trap'? For all she knew about terms for cross-dressers he could have said he was a splurge monkey or yiff jumper and it would have meant the same. […] "Now I'm Poppy. I'm a boy who's androgynous enough to be confused as a girl[.]"
ref: 2021, Coulsdon Writers, Back to the Writing, →ISBN, page 37:
text: , Klei Nightwriter, The Book of Voltaire: The Complete Bundle (Season 1) 3rd Edition REVISED, Klei Nightwriter
I love femboys better than trannies, traps are better than futa anyway. We conversed and we started to get close. I chose her. So, she told me to sit down so she can cut my hair. "I want to dye my hair; how much is that?"
glosses: A trick or arrangement designed to catch someone in a more general sense; a snare.
Someone with male-typical anatomy who passes as female.
examples: text: One way to spot a trap is to look for an adam's apple.
ref: 2013, One Piece: Grand Line 3 Point 5, page 47:
text: Of course Kei would look like a young woman, that's how traps work!
ref: 2010 July 20, Antonio E. Gonzalez, “Re:Moyashimon Live Action”, in rec.arts.anime.misc (Usenet):
text: I saw Episode 10 of the anime today. When it explains about the trap's problems in HS it was much clearer than the same section of the manga.
ref: 2013 September 7, Bobbie Sellers, “Re: What's your favouite anime?”, in rec.arts.manga (Usenet):
glosses: A trick or arrangement designed to catch someone in a more general sense; a snare.
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, josou.
qualifier: usually considered offensive
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: An exception generated by the processor or by an external event.
examples: text: They shot out of the school gates like greyhounds out of the trap.
glosses: Any device used to hold and suddenly release an object.
examples: text: Close the trap, would you, before someone falls and breaks their neck.
glosses: Any device used to hold and suddenly release an object.
A covering over a hole or opening; a trapdoor.
examples: text: There is likewise a cabin trap with five steps.
ref: 1798 January 3, Edinburgh Weekly Journal, page 5:
text: I have to bear my burthen up four traps, or ladders, before I get to the main road which leads to the pit bottom.
ref: 1842, Ellison Jack (girl, age 11), quoted in The Condition and Treatment of the Children Employed in the Mines, page 48
text: They have very generally received the name of trap-rocks, because they often present the appearance of traps or stairs.
ref: 1847, David Low, Elements of Practical Agriculture, page 37:
text: Little Alf turned at once, and bidding Frank good-bye, he went into the house, and climbed up the trap stair into his little room in the garret, and pondered in his heart these words of Dolly's.
ref: 1867, The Children's hour, page 137:
text: The labour and time that are saved by thus concentrating and placing the heating power in doing away with the running to so many points, and up and down so many stairs or traps in attending to a number of fires, is also well worth noticing.
ref: 1875, The Gardner: A Magazine of Horticulture and Floriculture, page 3:
text: Coming near the door, Scorgie cautioned quietness, and pointing to a trap stair he motioned Mr. Love and Donald to ascend to the loft.
ref: 1887, George G. Green, Gordonhaven, page 114:
text: Had climbed up the trap-stair, and was busy potterin' aboot.
ref: 1889 (original 1886), Willock, Rosetty Ends, 29
text: Tossing, the negro walks up the trap-ladder. But the emotions of a drunkard change quickly.
ref: 1920, Soviet Russia, page 14:
text: The stokers, breaking into excited talk, picked him up and dragged him up the trap ladder to the deck. The Canadian wiped the blood off Petka's injured forehead ...
ref: 1960, Bernard Guilbert Guerney, An Anthology of Russian Literature in the Soviet Period from Gorki to Pasternak:
glosses: Any device used to hold and suddenly release an object.
A kind of movable stepladder or set of stairs.
glosses: 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.
topics: geography
geology
natural-sciences
glosses: 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 geological structure that creates a petroleum reservoir.
glosses: A wooden instrument shaped somewhat like a shoe, used in the game of trapball.
glosses: A wooden instrument shaped somewhat like a shoe, used in the game of trapball.
The game of trapball itself.
examples: text: trap phone
text: trap car
qualifier: African-American Vernacular
glosses: A vehicle, residential building, or sidewalk corner where drugs are manufactured, packaged, or sold.
examples: text: Maybe T.I was also making connection between fur trapping and living in the trap, or the hood.
ref: 2018, Kyle T. Mays, Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in North America, page 93:
text: Stay in the trap like my name was McCaulk. Dumb-ahh nigger, I think he meant Culkin.
ref: 2021 November 19, “Pink 3 Remix”performed by PCAJAY:
text: Bitch ass nigga get rocked. I walk in da trap with a Glock and a K in my sock. U fag ass nigga get popped. U a gay lil dumb ahh nigga came from TikTok. I'mma talk my shi won't stop. Bitch u all on my dick for a drop, nigga get off my cock.
ref: 2022 September 25, “Dork”performed by Aeterluv:
qualifier: African-American Vernacular
glosses: A vehicle, residential building, or sidewalk corner where drugs are manufactured, packaged, or sold.
An area, especially of a city, with a low level of opportunity and a high level of poverty and crime; a ghetto; a hood.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
qualifier: African-American Vernacular
glosses: A vehicle, residential building, or sidewalk corner where drugs are manufactured, packaged, or sold.
A genre of hip-hop music, with half-time drums and heavy sub-bass.
synonyms: trap music
examples: text: After 100 traps, the arresting cables have to be replaced to minimize the danger of a worn or fatigued cable snapping under an aircraft.
topics: aeronautics
aerospace
aviation
business
engineering
government
military
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
politics
war
glosses: A successful landing on an aircraft carrier using the carrier's arresting gear.
examples: text: a horse and trap
text: The two women looked down the alley. At the end of the Bottoms a man stood in a sort of old-fashioned trap, bending over bundles of cream-coloured stuff; while a cluster of women held up their arms to him, some with bundles.
ref: 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 2, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:
text: I had told them they could have my trap to take them as far as the road went, because after that they had a long walk.
ref: 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 51”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:
text: At the last moment Mollie, the foolish, pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones's trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of sugar.
ref: 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:
text: However, Anyon Kay remembers a Mr Walton Ainsworth, of Beech House, Rivington, who owned mills in Bolton, being a regular user before the First World War. He used to drive by horse and trap from his mansion to catch the 0906 train to Bolton each day. Before arriving at the station, local newsagent Tom Dutton would hand Mr Ainsworth his morning paper!
ref: 2023 March 8, Paul Salveson, “Fond farewells to two final trains...”, in RAIL, number 978, page 54:
glosses: A light two-wheeled carriage with springs.
examples: text: Keep your trap shut.
glosses: A person's mouth.
examples: text: But she carries the shawl so well that you never get a peep at her trap until she’s ready to show it to you.
ref: 1941, Henry Miller, Under the Roofs of Paris (Opus Pistorum), New York: Grove Press, published 1983, page 66:
glosses: Synonym of vagina.
synonyms: word: vagina
examples: text: “He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”
ref: 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC:
glosses: A policeman.
examples: text: ...his cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his "trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in)...
ref: 1870, Mark Twain, Running for Governor:
text: "Carry your traps out, Ma?" asked one of the passengers.
ref: 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter IX, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 144:
glosses: Belongings.
examples: text: I've just laid a cable in trap 2 so I'd give it 5 minutes if I were you.
glosses: A cubicle (in a public toilet).
qualifier: gun sports
glosses: Trapshooting.
examples: text: The miners′ grievances centred on the issue of the compulsory purchase of miners′ licences and the harassment of raids by the licensing police, the ‘traps,’ in search of unlicensed miners.
ref: 1996, Judith Kapferer, Being All Equal: Identity, Difference and Australian Cultural Practice, page 84:
text: Diggers were angered by frequent licence inspections and harassment by 'the traps' (the goldfield police).
ref: 2006, Helen Calvert, Jenny Herbst, Ross Smith, Australia and the World: Thinking Historically, page 55:
glosses: A mining license inspector during the Australian gold rush.
examples: text: The money clip held thirty-nine hundred dollars, combined with her trap money, she had five thousand dollars for her man.
ref: 2010, C. J. Land, A Hustler's Tale, page 54:
text: The code was to call a pimp and tell him you have his hoe plus turn over her night trap but that was bull because the HOE was out of his stable months before I copped her.
ref: 2011, Shaheem Hargrove, Sharice Cuthrell, The Rise and Fall of a Ghetto Celebrity, page 55:
text: For the first time in the week since she'd been hooking she hadn't made her trap.
ref: 2012 (original 1981), Alix Kates Shulman, On the Stroll: A Novel, Open Road Media
glosses: The money earned by a prostitute for a pimp.
Hyponyms: word: activity trap
word: baby trap
word: bass trap
word: beartrap
word: bear trap
word: beginner's trap
word: bell trap
word: booby trap
word: bottle trap
word: bus trap
word: camera trap
word: canary trap
word: cat-trap
word: Chinese finger trap
word: cold trap
word: copyright trap
word: deathtrap
word: death trap
word: debt trap
word: double trap
word: dust trap
word: elephant trap
word: evolutionary trap
word: firetrap
word: fish trap
word: fish-trap
word: foot trap
word: funnel trap
word: gene trap
word: gingerbread trap
word: grass trap
word: gravel trap
word: gumption trap
word: harp trap
word: Heligoland trap
word: honey trap
word: ink trap
word: ion trap
word: kettle trap
word: lean nitrogen oxide trap
word: liquidity trap
word: live-trap
word: lobster trap
word: louse trap
word: Macbeth trap
word: magnetic trap
word: Malaise trap
word: mantrap
word: mess trap
word: middle income trap
word: middle-income trap
word: mind like a steel trap
word: monkey trap
word: mousetrap
alt: neutrophil extracellular trap
word: NET
word: offside trap
word: opera house trap
word: optical trap
word: penis fly trap
word: Penning trap
word: potato trap
word: poverty trap
word: P trap
word: radar trap
word: rattle trap
word: rattletrap
word: reverse trap
word: running trap
word: Rybachy trap
word: sand trap
word: sedimentary trap
word: sink trap
word: SLAM trap
word: smell trap
word: snap trap
word: speed trap
word: spin trap
word: stench trap
word: stink trap
word: S trap
word: subscription trap
word: sucker trap
word: sun trap
word: tank trap
word: thirst trap
word: Thucydides trap
word: tourist trap
word: understand trap
word: unemployment trap
word: volcanic trap
word: welfare trap
word: yellow trap
word: yrast trap
Derived terms: around the traps
belly trap
debt trap diplomacy
fall into a trap
flowline trap
fly out of the traps
hash-trap
live-trap
pony and trap
race out of the traps
trap ball
trap bar
trap-bath split
trap car
trap crop
trapdoor
trap house
trap maker
trap music
trap nest
trap phone
trap points
trap-pop
traps case
trap set
trap shoot
trap stairs
trap street
trap yard