knaps

Verb

knap (third-person singular simple present knaps, present participle knapping, simple past and past participle knapped)

1. (transitive) To break (something) into small pieces with a cracking sound; to fragment, to smash; also, to break (something) apart sharply; to snap.
   • He hath made warres to ceaſſe in all the worlde: he hath broken the bowe, he hath knapped the ſpeare in ſonder, ⁊ brẽt [brent] the charettes in the fyre.1535 October 14 (Gregorian calendar), Myles Coverdale, transl., Biblia: The Byble, […] (Coverdale Bible), [Cologne or Marburg]: [Eucharius Cervicornus and Johannes Soter?], →OCLC, Psalm xlv:[9]
   1. (especially, specifically, transitive) To break away flakes from (a brittle material which fractures conchoidally (“with planar concentric curves”), usually a mineral such as chert, flint, or obsidian), often to form a tool with a sharp edge or point.
      • An average workman will knap 3,000 flints in a day of 12 hours, but a good one will make 4,000 at a pinch.1879, Sydney B. J. Skertchly, “Manufacture of Gun-flints”, in On the Manufacture of Gun-flints, the Methods of Excavating for Flint, the Age of Palæolithic Man, and the Connexion between Neolithic...
2. (transitive) To strike (something) sharply; to knock, to rap.
   • Take one Veſſel of Siluer, and another of VVood, and fill each of them full of VVater, and then knap the Tongs together, as before, about an handfull from the Bottome, and you ſhall finde the Sound much more Reſounding from the Veſſel of Siluer, than from that of VVood: […] ſuch a Communication...1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “VII. Century. [Experiments in Consort, Touching Production, Conseruation, and Delation of Sounds; and the Office of the Aire therein.]”, in Sylua Syluarum...

   Synonyms:

   knack

3. (transitive) Followed by off: to break (something) away from another thing by striking or tapping sharply.
   • VVith his rod […] he knapt of the uppermoſt heads and tops of the poppies.1600, T[itus] Livius [i.e., Livy], “[Book LIV]”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Romane Historie […], London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC, page 38
4. (figuratively, transitive) To say (something) crisply or sharply.
   • [T]he evil spirit of the year sixteen hundred and forty-twa is at wark again as merrily as ever, and ilka [every] auld wife in the chimley-neuck will be for knapping doctrine wi' doctors o' divinity and the godly fathers o' the church.1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter VII, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume II (Old Mortality), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]...
5. (intransitive) To break or fracture suddenly; to snap.
   • In ſtringinge of your bovv […] you muſt mark the fit length of youre bovve. […] Yf it [the string] be longe, the bendynge muſt nedes be in the ſmal of the ſtring, vvhich beynge ſore tvvined muſte nedes knap in ſunder to yͤ diſtruction of manye good bovves.1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge […], London: […] Edouardi Whytchurch, →OCLC

See all 18 meanings of knap