knap
1 Americannoun
verb (used with or without object)
-
to strike smartly; rap.
-
to break off abruptly.
-
to chip or become chipped, as a flint or stone.
-
to bite suddenly or quickly.
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of knap1
before 1000; Middle English; Old English cnæpp top, summit; cognate with Old Norse knappr knob
Origin of knap2
First recorded in 1425–75; Late Middle English; cognate with Dutch knapen “to crack”; imitative of the sound
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It was easy to knap, or to flake off, pieces into utilitarian shapes and didn’t need to be tempered or treated with heat as some tool stones do.
From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2023
Our Paleolithic ancestors learned to knap delicate blades from round stone cobbles, hunt large game and cook their food.
From Scientific American ● Dec. 13, 2022
The course was jointly led by Ojibwe elders, who taught him how to knap flint, tan hides and build wigwams.
From New York Times ● Sep. 13, 2022
Cul-de-Sac was shot in a 13th century fortress perched on a precipitous knap that rises out of Holy Island, a dot in the North Sea off the coast of Northumberland.
From Time Magazine Archive
‘Twenty between us. Not nearly enough. Do you know how to knap flint?’
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
Ariane Burke, an archeozoologist at the University of Montreal, said she was also struck by the absence of knapped stone tools.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 26, 2017
This every-which-way process has been at work ever since the first prehistoric flint pebble was knapped into a butchering tool.
From Time Magazine Archive
The ash staves knapped with a shriek, and flew in splinters about the field.
From Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut by Eugene Mason
I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped Ginger.
From The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a third husband.
From The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
This method of shaping stone is known as "knapping."
From Science Daily ● Jul. 27, 2026
By that time, toolmakers were already skilled at knapping.
From Science Magazine ● Feb. 8, 2023
It was there that he learned flint knapping, the shaping of stone to make tools.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2021
Meanwhile, in the backyard, Clark leads an impromptu flint knapping lesson, using obsidian nodules strewn about the lawn.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 18, 2018
Alas! the palmy days of knapping gun-flints for the British Army will never return to Brandon.
From Anthropology by R. R. (Robert Ranulph) Marett
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
