whap

See also: WHAP

English

Etymology 1

Onomatopoeic; variant of whop.

Noun

whap (plural whaps)

1. A blow; a hit; a whop.

Verb

whap (third-person singular simple present whaps, present participle whapping, simple past and past participle whapped)

1. (US, transitive) To strike hard and suddenly.
2. (US, intransitive) To throw oneself quickly, or by an abrupt motion; to turn suddenly.
   • 1844, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Judge Haliburton’s Yankee Stories, Part Two, Chapter 22, Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, pp. 179-180,^[1]

     He wears his hat a little a one side, rakish-like, whaps his cane down ag’in the pavement hard, as if he intended to keep things in their place, swaggers a few, as if he though he had a right to look big […]

   • 1848, John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms‎^[2], New York: Bartlett & Welford, page 379:

     TO WHAP OVER. To turn over. (New England.)

   • 1902, Henry Van Dyke, “The Mill”, in The Blue Flower‎^[3], New York: Scribner, page 65:

     And at last, as they wrestled and whapped together, they fell headlong in the stream.

   • 1989, John Irving, chapter 9, in A Prayer for Owen Meany‎^[4], New York: William Morrow, page 524:

     Screen doors whapped throughout the night […]

   She whapped down on the floor.

   The fish whapped over.

Interjection

whap

1. The sound of sudden blow or hit.
   • 1989 June 5, The Canberra Times, Australia Capital Territory, page 10, column 2:

     Whap, Biff, Ooooof, Sock, Pow, Zok! Batman is back. Gotham City is again leaving its law and order in the hands of a man who wears plastic underpants over his tights.

Derived terms

• awhape

Etymology 2

Variant of whaup.

Noun

whap (plural whaps)

1. (Scotland, obsolete) The curlew, Numenius arquata; a whaup.

References

• “whap”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.