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trap

noun

a contrivance used for catching game or other animals, as a mechanical device that springs shut suddenly.

any device, stratagem, trick, or the like for catching a person unawares.

any of various devices for removing undesirable substances from a moving fluid, vapor, etc., as water from steam or cinders from coal gas.

Also called air trap. an arrangement in a pipe, as a double curve or a U-shaped section, in which liquid remains and forms a seal for preventing the passage or escape of air or of gases through the pipe from behind or below.

traps, the percussion instruments of a jazz or dance band.

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Trapshooting, Skeet. a device for hurling clay pigeons into the air.

the piece of wood, shaped somewhat like a shoe hollowed at the heel, and moving on a pivot, used in playing the game of trapball.

the game of trapball.

trap door.

10.

Sports. an act or instance of trapping a ball.

11.

Also called mousetrap, trap play. Football. a play in which a defensive player, usually a guard or tackle, is allowed by the team on offense to cross the line of scrimmage into the backfield and is then blocked out from the side, thereby letting the ball-carrier run through the opening in the line.

12.

Slang. mouth: Keep your trap shut.

13.

Chiefly British. a carriage, especially a light, two-wheeled one.

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verb (used with object)

14.

to catch in a trap; ensnare: to trap foxes.

15.

to catch by stratagem, artifice, or trickery.

16.

to furnish or set with traps.

17.

to provide (a drain or the like) with a trap.

18.

to stop and hold by a trap, as air in a pipe.

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19.

Sports. to catch (a ball) as it rises after having just hit the ground.

20.

Football. to execute a trap against (a defensive player).

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Trap is one of our favorite verbs.

So is kibitz. Does it mean:

chat, to converse

to bark; yelp.

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verb (used without object)

21.

to set traps for game: He was busy trapping.

22.

to engage in the business of trapping animals for their furs.

23.

Trapshooting, Skeet. to work the trap.

Origin:
before 1000; Middle English trappe (noun), trappen (v.), Old English træppe (noun), cognate with Middle Dutch trappe (Dutch trap) trap, step, staircase; akin to Old English treppan to tread, German Treppe staircase

Related forms

trap·like, adjective

Synonyms
1, 2. Trap, pitfall, snare apply to literal or figurative contrivances for deceiving and catching animals or people. Literally, a trap is a mechanical contrivance for catching animals, the main feature usually being a spring: a trap baited with cheese for mice. Figuratively, trap suggests the scheme of one person to take another by surprise and thereby gain an advantage: a trap for the unwary. A pitfall is (usually) a concealed pit arranged for the capture of large animals or of people who may fall into it; figuratively, it is any concealed danger, error, or source of disaster: to avoid the pitfalls of life. A snare is a device for entangling birds, rabbits, etc., with intent to capture; figuratively, it implies enticement and inveiglement: the temptress' snare.

Example Sentences

Miller that was tailored originally for television a couple of years ago, has fallen into a trap itself in being.

Her students have no idea that she is a prisoner of the graduate-school poverty trap.

But the appearance of a pastoral idyll conceals a poverty trap.

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Miller that was tailored originally for television a couple of years ago, has fallen into a trap itself in being.

Her students have no idea that she is a prisoner of the graduate-school poverty trap.

But the appearance of a pastoral idyll conceals a poverty trap.

Perhaps the shriek of a dying animal enticed the dinosaur into the trap.

Lasers can be used to trap and manipulate electrically neutral particles.

The chances that we'll trap and collar a lynx today are slim.

Doing it on the exterior could trap moisture and compromise the sill.

Some researchers have focused on designing precisely engineered materials that can trap light to harness its quantum properties.

Some products use batteries, while others trap heat in air pockets to create warmth without bulk.

The point is, that this is as much a trap as tenure.

For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself.

Once the trap door closes on the victim, digestive enzymes similar to those in the human stomach slowly consume the insect.

And now researchers have used one to trap a single molecule of water.

These defects are thought to trap electrons in such a way that they interact with the light to produce pink and red colors.

Filters trap small debris and help keep the water clean.

Millions of people who use smartphone software to avoid police speed traps may have fallen into a trap set by hackers instead.

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

But countries are not doomed to fall into this trap.

Both places are sources of gas hydrates, strange icelike substances that trap methane-the primary component of natural gas.

The fact that cities trap heat combined with global warming may mean greater increases in average temperatures and a loss of.

His eyes harden as he sees that the duiker had almost torn off a front leg trying to free itself from the trap.

Or trap by allowing them to collect on the underside of a slightly elevated board.

That'll give you some advance warning of a speed trap well before the radar gun actually paints your car.

Incidentally, this also seems to work well with shooting skeet or trap.

These fibres, which are generally hollow, trap a small amount of air in their interiors.

The team set a trap baited with fresh penguin meat in an area where trained dogs had detected concentrated rodent scent.

Apart from our waking visions, our internal perceptions can trap us into not accepting reality.

What is all to often ignored is it was one tribe of blacks who would help the white slave traders trap another tribe of blacks.

Some flowers even have hinges, trap doors, and booby traps.

The trap stops working and all your positrons come into contact with the container walls:.

Stop defining yourself in terms of your field of study--a common trap of graduate students and profs.

Humanity was once caught in the trap of high fertility and high mortality.

The magnetic force kept them briefly from colliding with the walls of the trap and obliterating themselves.

Manage aerosols by replacing catalytic converters with particle trap or air scrubber technology and activated carbon filters.

They were led into a topological trap and were not able to respond.

She calmly and surely scooped the bees into the box we'd prepared as a trap box.

Previous efforts have required heat to trap the carbon dioxide particles.

Higher enrollments can be a trap as well as a tool, and more smaller colleges are looking to get off the treadmill.

Poppy cultivation offered some respite from the trap.

Exterior storm doors can trap heat, which can damage the entry door.

The extra cavities in his sinus helped trap air, which was subsequently humidified.

The gay guys who the posse had hoped to trap were all on the right side of the fence, and celebrated a little victory dance.

Spiders trap adult moths in their webs, and parasitic wasps prey on the young larvae.

These spiders are known for spinning huge webs of golden silk and have been known to trap bats and small birds.

One trap that exists today is lack of work and study until after the first test.

He wants to know how humpback whales use a method called bubble feeding to trap fish.

By answering their e-mail, even to give false information, you may unwittingly fall into the trap.

The link of garden information to climate zone is important, but it can be a trap when information is extrapolated nationally.

And that points to the only way out of a trap that's lasted a decade.

But, you should not fall into the trap of thinking that you did treatment, so you are done.

The high seasonal humidity in many of the region's cities would act to trap fallout and intensify its effects.

Let's hope they don't fall into the pill pushing trap of pychiaitry.

So, they're both slowing down before they hit the speed trap.

But either way it's a unsustainable situation eventually economic demands trap them.

The bladderwort has an equally sophisticated way of setting its underwater trap.

The large angle results from bumps that trap air between water and the surface, minimizing contact with the surface.

If you suffer now, you are far less likely to get back into the debt trap.

Occasionally the nets trap beasts that humans have never seen before.

Collectively known as greenhouse gases, they trap heat in the earth's atmosphere.

University profs have today fallen into the trap of thinking that this as a purely individual right.

They set up a camera trap that snapped the picture of the.

The dust he kicked up reinforced the idea that the moon is one big sand trap.

Once swimmers inadvertently trap the young jellyfish in their swim caps or bathing suits, the larva fire off stinging cells.

The team hope to trap a virus in a vacuum using an electromagnetic field created by a laser.

He races to trap and study this rare animal before its habitat disappears.

These vortex beams are routinely used to trap and move microscopic biological particles for study in the lab.

The fibers trap bacteria, which the crab may use as food.

Unable to escape the trap of his own limited experience, everything is a matter of fear or belief with frgough.

These groves trap air, increasing water resistance of the water's striders legs and overall buoyancy of the insect.

Such greenhouse gases trap heat radiated off of the surface of the earth forming a type of insulation around the planet.

Oxidizing carbohydrates additionally increase heat trap in atmosphere and decrease oxygen available in cities.

If everything happens correctly, bonding occurs at points along the strands, forming pockets that trap the surrounding liquid.

But that makes it even more of a shame that the piece falls into the same trap as the subject it criticises.

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Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

traps, Informal. personal belongings; baggage.

verb (used with object)

to furnish with or as with trappings; caparison.

Origin:
1300–50; Middle English trappe (noun), trappen (v.) < ?

noun Geology.

any of various fine-grained, dark-colored igneous rocks having a more or less columnar structure, especially some form of basalt.

Also called traprock.

Origin:
1785–95; < Swedish trapp, variant of trappa stair (so named from the stepped appearance of their outcrops) < Middle Low German trappe. See trap¹

noun Scot.

a ladder or ladderlike device used to reach a loft, attic, etc.

Origin:
1750–60; < Dutch: stepladder; see trap¹

Link To trap

Collins

World English Dictionary

trap¹ (træp)

—n
1.	a mechanical device or enclosed place or pit in which something, esp an animal, is caught or penned
2.	any device or plan for tricking a person or thing into being caught unawares
3.	anything resembling a trap or prison
4.	a fitting for a pipe in the form of a U-shaped or S-shaped bend that contains standing water to prevent the passage of gases
5.	any similar device
6.	a device that hurls clay pigeons into the air to be fired at by trapshooters
7.	any one of a line of boxlike stalls in which greyhounds are enclosed before the start of a race
8.	See trap door
9.	a light two-wheeled carriage
10.	a slang word for mouth
11.	golf an obstacle or hazard, esp a bunker
12.	slang (plural) jazz percussion instruments
13.	obsolete, slang (Austral) (usually plural) a policeman

—vb , traps, trapping, trapped
14.	(tr) to catch, take, or pen in or as if in a trap; entrap
15.	(tr) to ensnare by trickery; trick
16.	(tr) to provide (a pipe) with a trap
17.	to set traps in (a place), esp for animals

[Old English træppe; related to Middle Low German trappe, Medieval Latin trappa]

'traplike¹

—*adj*

trap² (træp)

—n
1.	an obsolete word for trappings

—vb (often foll by out) , traps, trapping, trapped
2.	to dress or adorn

[C11: probably from Old French drap cloth]

trap or traprock³ (træp)

—n
1.	any fine-grained often columnar dark igneous rock, esp basalt
2.	any rock in which oil or gas has accumulated

[C18: from Swedish trappa stair (from its steplike formation); see trap¹]

traprock or traprock³

—n

[C18: from Swedish trappa stair (from its steplike formation); see trap¹]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

trap

late O.E. træppe "snare, trap," from P.Gmc. *trap- (cf. M.Du. trappe "trap, snare"), related to Gmc. words for "stair, step, tread" (cf. M.Du., M.L.G. trappe, treppe, Ger. Treppe "step, stair"). Probably connected to O.Fr. trape, Sp. trampa "trap, pit, snare," but the exact relationship is uncertain.

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The connecting notion seems to be "that on which an animal steps." Sense of "deceitful practice, trickery" is first recorded 1680s. Sense in speed trap recorded from 1906. Slang meaning "mouth" is from 1776. The verb is attested from late 14c. (O.E. had betræppan); trap door is first attested late 14c.

COLLAPSE

Slang Dictionary

trap definition

n.
the mouth. (Crude.) : Put this in your trap and chew it up.
n.
a low place; a dive. : This trap is a mess. Clean it up!

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

trap definition

1. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS performs some action, then returns control to the program.
2. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor." Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."
This term is associated with assembler programming ("interrupt" or "exception" is more common among HLL programmers) and appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to shrink. However, it is still important to computer architects and systems hackers (see system, sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).
[Jargon File]

American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

trap

see fall into a trap; mind like a steel trap.

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air trap atom trap black-light trap booby trap decoy flytrap

Slang

bear trap fly trap fox trap

rattle-trap Shut your trap! tourist trap

Idioms & Phrases

fall into a trap

mind like a steel trap

Matching Quote

"Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap."

-unknown author

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