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• sap
  sap

  noun

  the juice or vital circulating fluid of a plant, especially of a woody plant.
• SAP
  SAP

  abbreviation

  South African Police

sap

¹ American  

[sap] / sæp /

noun

1. the juice or vital circulating fluid of a plant, especially of a woody plant.

2. any vital body fluid.

3. energy; vitality.

4. sapwood.

5. Slang. a fool; sucker; dupe.

6. Metallurgy. soft metal at the core of a bar of blister steel.

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verb (used with object)

sapped, sapping

1. to drain the sap from.

sap ² American  

[sap] / sæp /

noun

1. Fortification. a deep, narrow trench constructed so as to form an approach to a besieged place or an enemy's position.

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verb (used with object)

sapped, sapping

1. to undermine; gradually or insidiously weaken or destroy.

   Synonyms:

   undermine, weaken, tire, impair, exhaust, enfeeble, enervate, drain, deplete

2. Fortification.

   1. to approach (a besieged place or an enemy position) by means of deep, narrow trenches protected by gabions or parapets.

   2. to dig such trenches in (ground).

verb (used without object)

sapped, sapping

1. Fortification. to dig a sap.

sap ³ American  

[sap] / sæp /

noun

1. a short club with a heavy tip that is used as a weapon; blackjack; bludgeon.

   The burglar carried a set of lockpicks and a sap.

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verb (used with object)

1. to hit (someone) with a club.

   If he tries to sneak out, I'll sap him over the head.

sap ¹ British  

/ sæp /

noun

1. a solution of mineral salts, sugars, etc, that circulates in a plant

2. any vital body fluid

3. energy; vigour

4. slang a gullible or foolish person

5. another name for sapwood

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verb

1. to drain of sap

SAP ² British  

abbreviation

1. South African Police

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SAP ³ British  

/ sæp /

acronym

1. Standard Assessment Procedure, the recognized performance indicator for measuring energy efficiency in buildings

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sap ⁴ British  

/ sæp /

noun

1. a deep and narrow trench used to approach or undermine an enemy position, esp in siege warfare

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verb

1. to undermine (a fortification, etc) by digging saps

2. (tr) to weaken

sap Scientific  

/ săp /

1. The watery fluid that circulates through a plant that has vascular tissues. Sap moving up the xylem carries water and minerals, while sap moving down the phloem carries water and food.

2. See cell sap

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Other Word Forms

• sapless
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of sap¹

First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English sæp; cognate with Dutch sap; akin to German Saft juice, Old Norse safi; sap ¹ in def. 5 a shortening of saphead

Origin of sap²

First recorded in 1585–95; from French noun sape “spade, spadework,” derivative of saper “to dig a trench,” from Italian zappare “to undermine,” a military term, based on zappa “hoe”

Origin of sap³

First recorded in 1895–1900; perhaps shortening of sapling or sapwood (used as a tool or weapon)

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Explanation

To sap something is to drain or deplete something over time. If you sap a maple tree, you drain the liquid inside it to make maple syrup. But if you sap a person of strength, you've rendered him defenseless. Whether used as a noun or verb, sap is rarely a good thing. If your energy or will is sapped, it’s not meant lightly; it means you have been exhausted of all your reserve energy, you’re reduced to a shell. If someone calls you "a sap," it suggests you lack strength and character. And if you get sap — the sticky liquid inside a tree — on your hands, good luck getting it off in the middle of a forest without a bar of soap and running water. Yuck.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sap SAP sapped sapping

About two-thirds of that hit would come from the lasting disruption to oil and gas markets, as ballooning energy bills sap households’ purchasing power and business investment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

Industry friends won’t unless they’re either a saint, a sap or just stupid.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026

Giant hogweed contains a sap which can leave painful blistering and scarring when it comes into contact with human skin.

From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026

One such chemical is sulfoxaflor, a next generation pesticide introduced in 2013 to eliminate sap feeding insects such as aphids on crops including soybeans and corn.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 10, 2026

Its berries, its bark, its leaves, its sap, its pulp, its wood, they all thrum and burn and twist with life.

From "A Monster Calls" by Patrick Ness

SAP reported that its third-quarter total revenue increased 12% to 10.27 billion euros, while cloud business sales grew 25% to 6.67 billion euros.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

Asam said a new KPI would help investors compare SAP with U.S. rivals, but the company wants to wait until the metric is mature to introduce it.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 22, 2026

While a student there, he interned at Massachusetts-based cloud computing company Akamai Technologies, German software company SAP, and Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2026

Attendees ranged from strategists at Anthropic and SAP to employees of branding firms, as well as patent attorneys who discussed AI’s influence on trademark law over coffee.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

The area its radius vector sweeps out is therefore SAP, instead of what it would have been, SAB.

From Pioneers of Science by Sir Oliver Lodge

Low-friction digital convenience has sapped life and music of their organic weight.

From Salon ● Oct. 24, 2026

The Rio Grande has been sapped by more than two decades of drought and a century of heavy water use.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026

In 2020, it was global lockdowns that sapped demand for fuel almost overnight, while triggering a short-lived U.S. recession.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 20, 2026

And in the last quarter-century, relentless drought intensified by climate change has sapped the river’s flow and left its reservoirs severely depleted.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026

The color was sapped from the scene, the entire room cast in grayscale, and a trail of words had drifted past them along the floor, translating the things she uttered into English.

From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny

High energy prices and fading consumer sentiment are sapping the appetite of individual traders, while the spike in U.S.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 26, 2026

It offloaded bare-bones models into rental fleets, sapping resale values.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

What it suggests is each rally is sapping more and more strength from the bulls.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 19, 2026

Rising bond yields around the world are sapping investors’ appetite for stocks, interrupting a chip-stock rally that fueled major stock indexes to fresh highs this week.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

He had to fight every second to stay afloat, and sheer terror was sapping his strength.

From "Stormbreaker" by Anthony Horowitz

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Related Words

• blunt
• deplete
• destroy
• drain
• erode
• exhaust
• impair
• ruin
• undermine
• vitiate
• wreck

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