Nap

How to spell nap

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce nap

What does nap mean?

1. nounA short period of sleep, usually taken during the day.
2. verbTo sleep for a short while, especially during the day.
3. nounThe soft raised surface of fibres on a fabric such as velvet or suede.

Nap in a sentence

• noun

  A quick nap after lunch left him feeling refreshed.

• verb

  He likes to nap on the train during his commute home.

• noun

  Brushing the velvet against the nap makes the colour look darker.

• noun

  The toddler takes a long nap every afternoon.

• verb

  The cat will nap in the warm patch of sunlight all afternoon.

• noun

  The worn coat had lost its nap at the elbows.

Where does nap come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

For the sense of a short sleep, nap descends from the Old English verb hnappian, meaning 'to doze' or 'to slumber lightly', a native Germanic word with relatives in other old Germanic tongues. Over the centuries the initial 'hn' cluster, which English speakers found awkward, simplified to a plain 'n', leaving the short, blunt word we use today. The unrelated textile sense, the soft raised surface of cloth, came later in the 1400s, probably from the Middle Dutch or Low German noppe meaning 'tuft' or 'knot of wool'. The two meanings have nothing in common historically; they merely converged on the same three letters once the spellings settled. Because the word is so short and phonetically regular, the spelling itself has stayed remarkably stable.

How the word is built

• nap (a single root word; no prefix or suffix)