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Sap   /sæp/   Listen
noun
Sap  n.  
1.
The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition. Note: The ascending is the crude sap, the assimilation of which takes place in the leaves, when it becomes the elaborated sap suited to the growth of the plant.
2.
The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.
3.
A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop. (Slang)
Sap ball (Bot.), any large fungus of the genus Polyporus. See Polyporus.
Sap green, a dull light green pigment prepared from the juice of the ripe berries of the Rhamnus catharticus, or buckthorn. It is used especially by water-color artists.
Sap rot, the dry rot. See under Dry.
Sap sucker (Zool.), any one of several species of small American woodpeckers of the genus Sphyrapicus, especially the yellow-bellied woodpecker (Sphyrapicus varius) of the Eastern United States. They are so named because they puncture the bark of trees and feed upon the sap. The name is loosely applied to other woodpeckers.
Sap tube (Bot.), a vessel that conveys sap.



Sap  n.  (Mil.) 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.
Sap fagot (Mil.), a fascine about three feet long, used in sapping, to close the crevices between the gabions before the parapet is made.
Sap roller (Mil.), a large gabion, six or seven feet long, filled with fascines, which the sapper sometimes rolls along before him for protection from the fire of an enemy.



verb
Sap  v. t.  (past & past part. sapped; pres. part. sapping)  
1.
To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of. "Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapped by floods, Their houses fell upon their household gods."
2.
(Mil.) To pierce with saps.
3.
To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken. "Ring out the grief that saps the mind."



Sap  v. i.  To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps. "Both assaults are carried on by sapping."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sap" Quotes from Famous Books



... the news columns of the Record-Union will be found all the essential details of the circumstances of the killing of D.S. Terry. It will be evident to the reader that they readily sap the whole case, and that there is no substantial dispute possible concerning the facts. These truths we assert, without fear of successful contradiction, establish the justifiableness of the act of the United States marshal who fired upon and killed Terry. We think there will be no ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... precious these are. There is a deeper thing wanted than these. The best way to secure Christian conduct is to cultivate communion with Christ. It is better to work at the increase of the central force than at the improvement of the circumferential manifestations of it. Get more of the sap into the branch, and there will be more fruit. Have more of the life of Christ in the soul, and the conduct and the speech will be more Christlike. We may cultivate individual graces at the expense of the harmony and beauty of the whole ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... certain whether this Shelleyan paradox, greatly daring, meant to minimize the importance of the 'only public revelation' granted to the chosen people. But we have enough to understand the general trend of the argument. It did not actually intend to sap the foundations of Scriptural authority. But it was bold enough to risk a little shaking in order to prove that the Sacred Books of the Greeks and Romans did not, after all, present us with a much more rickety structure. This was a task of conciliation rather ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... on more slowly, guided only by the faint cuts at intervals on tree-trunks, all of which "bled," giving out a milky sap; and then again the sign failed. About them were the trees in endless columns, overhead was the roof of leaves, and on the ground was a tangle of undergrowth and decaying vegetation, that gave out ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... another, White Sark, or White Shirt—I wonder they did not tall him Dirty Shirt; and Ivarr, another, who was king of Northumberland, they called Beinlausi, or the Legless, because he was spindle-shanked, had no sap in his bones, and consequently no children. He was a great king, it is true, and very wise, nevertheless his blackguard countrymen, always averse, as their descendants are, to give credit to anybody, for any valuable quality or possession, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow


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