Word.ws English Dictionary

lap

/læp/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/lap/

lap noun: the loose part of a coat; the lower part of a garment that plays loosely; a skirt; an apron. Also the clipping of laparoscopy.

Noun (1)

lap (plural laps)

  1. The loose part of a coat; the lower part of a garment that plays loosely; a skirt; an apron.
  2. An edge; a border; a hem, as of cloth.
  3. The part of the clothing that lies on the knees or thighs when one sits down; that part of the person thus covered.
  4. (figuratively) A place of rearing and fostering.
  5. The upper legs of a seated person.
    • The boy was sitting on his mother's lap.
  6. (archaic, euphemistic) The female pudenda.
  7. A component that overlaps or covers any portion of itself or of an adjacent component.

Verb (1)

lap (third-person singular simple present laps, present participle lapping, simple past and past participle lapped)

  1. (transitive) To enfold; to hold as in one's lap; to cherish.
    • Her garment spreads, and laps him in the fold.1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, John Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The Sixth Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […]...
  2. (transitive) To rest or recline in someone's lap, or as in a lap.
    • to lap his head on lady's breasta. 1839, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Gog

Verb (2)

lap (third-person singular simple present laps, present participle lapping, simple past and past participle lapped or (archaic) lapt)

  1. (transitive) To fold; to bend and lay over or on something.
    • to lap a piece of cloth
  2. (transitive) to wrap around, enwrap, wrap up
    • to lap a bandage around a finger
    • About the paper […] I lapped several times a slender thread of very black silk.1704, I[saac] N[ewton], “(please specify |book=1 to 3)”, in Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. […], London: […] Sam[uel] Smith, and Benj[amin]...
  3. (transitive) to envelop, enfold
    • lapped in luxury
  4. (intransitive) to wind around
  5. (transitive) To place or lay (one thing) so as to overlap another.
    • One laps roof tiles so that water can run off.
  6. (transitive) To polish (a surface, especially metal or gemstone) with very fine abrasive to achieve smoothness and small dimensional changes.
  7. (intransitive) To be turned or folded; to lie partly on or over something; to overlap.
    • The cloth laps back.
    • The boats lap; the edges lap.
  8. (transitive) To overtake a straggler in a race by completing one more whole lap than the straggler.
    Antonyms:
    unlap
  9. To cut or polish with a lap, as glass, gems, cutlery, etc.

Noun (2)

lap (plural laps)

  1. The act or process of lapping.
  2. That part of any substance or fixture which extends over, or lies upon, or by the side of, a part of another.
    • the lap of a board
  3. The state or condition of being in part extended over or by the side of something else; or the extent of the overlapping.
    • The second boat got a lap of half its length on the leader.
  4. The amount by which a slide valve at its half stroke overlaps a port in the seat, being equal to the distance the valve must move from its mid stroke position in order to begin to open the port. Used alone, lap refers to outside lap (see below).
  5. One circuit around a race track.
    • to run twenty laps
    • to drive the fastest lap in qualifying
  6. The traversal of one length of the pool, or (less commonly) one length and back again.
    • to swim two laps
  7. In card playing and other games, the points won in excess of the number necessary to complete a game;—so called when they are counted in the score of the following game.
  8. A sheet, layer, or bat, of cotton fiber prepared for the carding machine.
  9. A piece of brass, lead, or other soft metal, used to hold a cutting or polishing powder in cutting glass, gems, etc. or in polishing cutlery or in toolmaking. It is usually in the form of a wheel or disk that revolves on a vertical axis.

Verb (3)

lap (third-person singular simple present laps, present participle lapping, simple past and past participle lapped or (archaic) lapt)

  1. (ambitransitive) To take (liquid) into the mouth with the tongue; to lick up with a quick motion of the tongue.
    • Don’t lap your soup like that! You look like a dog.
    • They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
  2. (intransitive) To wash against a surface with a splashing sound; to swash.
    • I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, / And the wild water lapping on the crag.1870, Alfred Tennyson, “The Passing of Arthur”, in The Holy Grail and Other Poems, London: Strahan and Co., […], →OCLC, page 144

Noun (3)

lap (countable and uncountable, plural laps)

  1. The taking of liquid into the mouth with the tongue.
    • With each lap of its tongue a cat gathers up milk and throws it well back into the gateway of its throat […]1955, Ann Haven Morgan, Kinships of Animals and Man: A Textbook of Animal Biology, page 176
  2. (obsolete, slang, uncountable) Liquor; alcoholic drink.

Noun (4) capitalized: LAP

LAP (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of load, assemble, pack (“munitions operations”).

Also used as

lap is also the clipping of laparoscopy.

lap is also the clipping of laparotomy.

lap is also the clipping of laparoscopic.

lap meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu

lap in Hindi

गोद, लैप

lap in Marathi

upper legs of a seated person
मांडी māṇḍī

lap in Urdu

گود, لیپ

lap in Telugu

ల్యాప్
More languagesFewer languages
lap in Malayalam
ലാപ്പ്
lap in Kannada
ಲ್ಯಾಪ್
lap in Punjabi
ਲੈਪ, ਲੈੱਪ, ਗੋਦ
lap in Gujarati
ખોળો khoḷo
lap in Assamese
কোলা küla
lap in Nepali
ल्याप, ल्यापिङ गर्न
lap in Tagalog
kandungan
lap in Arabic
حَجَر ḥajar, وَلَغَ walaḡa
lap in Malay
riba
lap in Indonesian
pangkuan
lap in Thai
ตัก dtàk

Examples of lap in a sentence

  • to win by three laps
  • The upper wings are opacous[…]; at their hinder ends, where they lap over, transparent, like the wing of a fly.1681, Nehemiah Grew, Musæum Regalis Societatis. Or A Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal...
  • The dogs by the River Nilus's side, being thirsty, lap hastily […]as they run along the shore.1644, Kenelme [i.e., Kenelm] Digby, Two Treatises. In the One of which, the Nature of Bodies; in the Other, the Nature of Mans Soule; is...

All 40 example sentences with lap

Antonyms of lap

Forms of lap

Noun
plurallaps
Verb
third-person singular presentlaps
present participlelapping
past participlelapped
pastlapped
past participle (archaic)lapt
past (archaic)lapt

Past tense of lap: lapped

Plural of lap: laps

Origin of lap

From Middle English lappe, from Old English læppa (“skirt or flap of a garment”), from Proto-West Germanic *lappō, from Proto-Germanic *lappô (“cloth; rag”), of uncertain origin, possibly Proto-Indo-European *leb- (“to hang loosely”). Cognate with Dutch lap (“cloth; rag”), German Lappen (“cloth; lobe; flap”), Icelandic leppur (“rag; patch”).

From Middle English lappen (“to fold, wrap”) from earlier wlappen (“to fold, wrap”), from Old English *wlappan, *wlæppan, *wlappian (“to wrap”), from Proto-Germanic *wlapp-, *wrapp- (“to wrap, fold, roll up, turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *werb- (“to bend, turn”). Cognate with Middle Dutch lappen (“to wrap up, embrace”), dialectal Danish vravle (“to wind”), Old Italian goluppare (“to wrap, fold up”) (from Germanic). Doublet of wrap. Also related to envelop, develop. The sense of "to get a lap ahead (of someone) on a track" is from 1847, on notion of "overlapping." The noun meaning "a turn around a track" (1861) is from this sense.

From Middle English lappen, from Old English lapian, from Proto-West Germanic *lapōn, from Proto-Germanic *lapōną, *lapjaną (“to lick; lap”), from imitative Proto-Indo-European *leh₂b- (“to lap, lick”); akin to Old High German laffen (“to lick”), Old Norse lepja, Danish labe, Old Saxon lepil, German Löffel (“spoon”). Cognate with Latin lambere (“lick”). French lamper is a loanword from German. Compare Danish leffe, dialect German läffeln.

Words formed from lap

Phrases with lap

35 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with lap

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lap

What does lap mean?
Lap means the loose part of a coat; the lower part of a garment that plays loosely; a skirt; an apron.
What is lap in Hindi?
Lap in Hindi is गोद, लैप. See Lap meaning in Hindi.
How do you use lap in a sentence?
to win by three laps
What part of speech is lap?
Lap can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce lap?
Lap is pronounced /læp/ (UK).
What is the plural of lap?
The plural of lap is laps.

Words near lap in the dictionary

  1. laowai
  2. laowais
  3. laoya
  4. Laozi
  5. Laozian
  6. lap
  7. lap appe
  8. lap appies
  9. lap appy
  10. lap band
  11. lap bands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lap (page history and authors); LAP (page history and authors); lap (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lap (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lap (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lap (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lap (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lap (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); lap (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-lap.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lap.wav.

Cite this entry: “lap.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lap. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.