Word.ws English Dictionary

tap the admiral

tap the admiral verb: to steal some liquor from a cask that is in storage or transit.

Verb

tap the admiral (third-person singular simple present taps the admiral, present participle tapping the admiral, simple past and past participle tapped the admiral)

  1. (slang) To steal some liquor from a cask that is in storage or transit.

Forms of tap the admiral

third-person singular presenttaps the admiral
present participletapping the admiral
past participletapped the admiral
pasttapped the admiral

Origin of tap the admiral

John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1873) mentions a tale of this having been done with the rum cask in which Lord Nelson's body was brought to England.

Questions about tap the admiral

What does tap the admiral mean?
Tap the admiral means to steal some liquor from a cask that is in storage or transit.
What part of speech is tap the admiral?
Tap the admiral is a verb.
What is the past tense of tap the admiral?
The past tense of tap the admiral is tapped the admiral.

Words near tap the admiral in the dictionary

  1. tap or nap
  2. tap out
  3. tap pants
  4. tap tap
  5. tap taps
  6. tap the admiral
  7. tap up
  8. tap water
  9. tap, rack, bang
  10. tap, rack, go
  11. tap-dance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tap the admiral (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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Cite this entry: “tap the admiral.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tap_the_admiral. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.