Word.ws English Dictionary

lappet

lappet noun: a small decorative fold or flap, especially of lace or muslin, in a garment or headdress.

Noun

lappet (plural lappets)

  1. A small decorative fold or flap, especially of lace or muslin, in a garment or headdress.
    • Oout of hiz boozom drawn foorth a lappet of his napkin, edged with a blu la[c]e, and marked with a trulooue, a hart & a D, for Damian: for he waz but a bachelar yet.c. 1575, The Langham letter, page 47
    • […] lifting up the Lappet of his Coat, he put me gently into it, and immediately ran along with me to his Master […]1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, (please specify |part=I to IV), page 161
  2. A wattle or flap-like structure on the face.
    • Some vultures have lappets of bare flesh on the sides of the head.
    • Tompot blennies are distinguished by a pair of lappets above the eyes and dark stripes along the body.
  3. A head-dress made with lappets for lace pendants.
  4. (obsolete) A lobe (division of an organ).
    • In the tender lappet of the eare is supposed to rest the seat of remembrance, which we vse to touch when we mean to take one to beare witnesse of an arrest or other thing done,1634, Philemon Holland, transl., The History of the World: commonly called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus, London, Book 11, Chapter 45, p. 550
    • […] he ran him in with the spit a little above the navel, towards the right flank, till he pierced the third lappet of his liver,1653, Thomas Urquhart, transl., The First Book of the Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais, containing five books of the lives, heroick deeds and sayings of Gargantua, and his sonne Pantagruel, London...

Verb

lappet (third-person singular simple present lappets, present participle lappeting, simple past and past participle lappeted)

  1. (transitive) To decorate with, or as if with, lappets.
    • I would fain merit your esteem, heedless of these pursy fellows from hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappetted by the pen behind it […]1824, Walter Savage Landor, “Oliver Cromwel and Walter Noble”, in Imaginary Conversations, volume 1, London: Taylor and Hessey, page 58

lappet meaning in Tamil and Arabic

lappet in Tamil

தொங்கல், மடல், தசை மடுப்பு, மடு

lappet in Arabic

small decorative fold or flap
ذُؤَابَة ḏuʔāba

Examples of lappet in a sentence

  • He wears […] a white wig, the curls of which hang down like lappets over his shoulders, and form a good contrast with the plump, rosy, shining face beneath it.1815, William Hazlitt, “Mr. Harley’s Fidget”, in A View of the English Stage, London: John Warren, published 1821, page 139:
  • I have small breasts that lie flattened against the chest like lappets.1986, Hortense Calisher, The Bobby-Soxer, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Part 2, p. 122:
  • I have not seen myself in a mirror these many months.’ She pats her fur cap, pulls its lappets over her ears; laughs.2012, Hilary Mantel, chapter 2, in Bring Up the Bodies, New York: Henry Holt, page 86:

Forms of lappet

Noun
plurallappets
Verb
third-person singular presentlappets
present participlelappeting
past participlelappeted
pastlappeted

Origin of lappet

From lap + -et.

Words formed from lappet

Phrases with lappet

Words that rhyme with lappet

Questions about lappet

What does lappet mean?
Lappet means a small decorative fold or flap, especially of lace or muslin, in a garment or headdress.
What is lappet in Tamil?
Lappet in Tamil is தொங்கல், மடல், தசை மடுப்பு. See Lappet meaning in Tamil.
How do you use lappet in a sentence?
He wears […] a white wig, the curls of which hang down like lappets over his shoulders, and form a good contrast with the plump, rosy, shining face beneath it.
What part of speech is lappet?
Lappet can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of lappet?
The plural of lappet is lappets.

Words near lappet in the dictionary

  1. lapper
  2. lapper-milk
  3. lappered
  4. lappering
  5. lappers
  6. lappet
  7. lappet moth
  8. lappet moths
  9. lappet-faced vulture
  10. lappet-faced vultures
  11. lappeted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lappet (page history and authors); lappet (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-lappet.wav.

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