Tap

How to spell tap

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tap

What does tap mean?

1. verbTo strike something gently and briefly, often repeatedly.
2. nounA device that controls the flow of liquid or gas from a pipe or container.
3. verbTo secretly monitor a telephone line or other communication.

Tap in a sentence

• verb

  He liked to tap the desk with his pen while thinking.

• noun

  The plumber replaced the leaking kitchen tap this morning.

• verb

  Investigators obtained a warrant to tap the suspect's phone.

• verb

  You can tap the screen twice to open the app.

• noun

  She filled the glass straight from the tap.

• verb

  The agency was accused of trying to tap private conversations.

Where does tap come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

"Tap" actually answers to two separate ancestries that fell together in spelling. The verb meaning to strike lightly comes from Old French "taper", an imitative word that echoed the soft sound of a light blow, and it entered English in the 1300s. The noun meaning a valve or spout for drawing liquid is far older and native, descending from Old English "tæppa", a peg or stopper pushed into a cask, which has cousins across the Germanic languages including Dutch "tap" and German "Zapfen". From that cask-peg sense came the idea of "tapping" a barrel to draw its contents, and later the household water tap. Because both words are so short and phonetically plain, the spelling has never wandered, which is why "tap" is one of the few English words with almost no trap at all.

How the word is built

• tap (single root, of imitative/Germanic origin); no prefix or suffix