Definition of "sap" in English

noun

1. (uncountable) The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition.

2. (uncountable) The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.

3. Any juice.

4. (figurative) Vitality.

5. (slang, countable) A naive person; a simpleton.

   • Look at the sap mowing our lawn while we pretend our own lawnmower is broken.

verb

1. (transitive, figurative) To exhaust the vitality of.

2. (transitive) To drain, suck or absorb sap from (a tree, etc.).

verb

1. (transitive) To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.

2. (transitive) To gradually drain (someone's energy or vitality).

   • to sap one’s conscience
   • He saps my energy.

3. (transitive, military) To pierce with saps.

4. (transitive) To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of.

noun

1. (military) 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.

noun

1. (countable, US, slang) A short wooden club; a leather-covered hand weapon; a blackjack.

   • I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and Eddie Mars' gang. I dodge bullets and eat saps.

verb

1. (transitive, slang) To strike with a sap (with a blackjack).

   • [A]s he passes the mouth of a narrow alley two men step out quickly. One of them saps Marlowe expertly — they drag him out of sight.