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.
Sap (?), v. i. To proceed by mining, or by
secretly undermining; to execute saps. W. P. Craighill.
Both assaults are carried on by sapping.
Tatler.
Sap , v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sapped (?);
p. pr. & vb. n.
Sapping.]
[F. saper (cf. Sp.
zapar, It. zapare), fr. sape a sort of scythe, LL. sappa a sort of mattock.] 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.
Dryden.
2. (Mil.) To pierce with saps.
3. To make unstable or infirm; to
unsettle; to weaken.
Ring out the
grief that saps the mind.
Tennyson.
Sap (?), n. [AS. sæp; akin to OHG. saf, G. saft, Icel. safi; of
uncertain origin; possibly akin to L. sapere to taste, to be wise, sapa must or new wine boiled thick. Cf. Sapid, Sapient.]
1. The juice of
plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition.
&fist; 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 (Zoöl.), any one of several species of small American woodpeckers of the genus Sphyrapicus, especially the yellow-bellied woodpecker (S. 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.
Hear it pronounced