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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



... a furrow we lead it from the dam; so shaped are the antlers of the horned beetle. How are these things related that such deep union should exist between them all? Is it chance? Or, are they not all the fine branches of one trunk, whose sap flows through us all? That would explain it. We nod over ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... and knowing that every light affliction works out an eternal weight of glory. This is what we need for improvement. For no efforts at improvement can accomplish that which this inward inspiration can do. It is a tide which bears us on. It takes from us the weight of years. It is the sap which rises into every branch, penetrates every twig, swells the buds, expands the leaves, opens the blossoms, ripens the fruit, and causes universal growth. And it is what we need for usefulness. For how mechanical and lifeless are ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... experience into the space of a day, thus increasing the possibilities of life, if not its beauty, fifteen years constitute the old age of a book. Such a survival might almost be said to be due to a tiny sluice of green sap under the gray bark. where it lies in the matter of this book, or what its source if, indeed, it be really there—is more of a mystery to my middle age than it was ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... appearance which the sun makes above the horizon on a winter day: only, her morning is about his noon. He says, however, there appears to be no necessary end to her sleep. It is like Decandolle's idea as to the life of a tree: keep up the required conditions, as sap, &c., and the tree will never decay. So, keep up the necessary conditions for her repose, and she continues to sleep. It is always some external accident of a disturbing nature which gets her up. He has sometimes proposed making an attempt so to arrange ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... it. Note that the issue in this case is—unfruitfulness. The man may, and I suppose usually does, keep up a profession of Christianity all his life. He very likely does not know that the seed is choked, and that he has become unfruitful. But he is a stunted, useless Christian, with all the sap and nourishment of his soul given to his worldly position, and his religion is a poor pining growth, with blanched leaves and abortive fruit. How much of Christ's field is filled with plants ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren


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