tapped
/tæpt/
tapped is the simple past and past participle of tap.
Adjective
tapped (comparative more tapped, superlative most tapped)
- Having a tap or taps.
- a tapped keg; a tapped maple tree
- Of a card or playing piece: used up for the current turn.
- Crazy, eccentric.
- This is one weird tribe, who get their kicks from electrocution, poisoning and causing car crashes (and that's when they're in a good mood!). They consider a holiday in the Bermuda Triangle the ultimate and anyone who keeps floating hands as pets has to be a bit tapped.1992, Lucy Hickman, The Addams Family (video game review in Crash issue 98, April 1992)
- His eyes danced with delight, and he laughed and told me I was tapped in the head as he mussed up my hair, provoking me to kick him in the butt.2021, Dorothy Preston, Getting Off the Radiator
- Unfocused, inattentive; dozy.
Meaning of tap
Verb
tap (third-person singular simple present taps, present participle tapping, simple past and past participle tapped)
- To furnish (a container, etc.) with a tap (noun etymology 1, noun sense 2.2) so that liquid can be drawn.
- There's a very pretty brew in tap at The Pure Drop—though, to be sure, not so good as at Rolliver's.1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter I, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, phase the first (The...
- To draw off (a liquid) from a container or other source; also, to draw off a liquid from (a container or other source).
- He tapped the ten-year-old whiskey from its barrel.
- To drain off fluid from (a person or a body cavity) by paracentesis.
- It is a hard thing to empty the vvater contained in the breaſt, becauſe the vvaies are not open by vvhich it ſhould be brought forth. Therefore Hippocrates doth adviſe to open the ſide, vvhich becauſe vve never ſee practiſed, and never read in any Author that it vvas done vvith good ſucceſs, vve...1655, Lazarus Riverius [i.e., Lazare Rivière], “Of the Dropsie in the Breast”, in Nicholas Culpeper, Abdiah Cole, and William Rowland, transl., The Practice of Physick, […], London: […] Peter Cole...
- To break into or open up (a thing) so as to obtain something; to exploit, to penetrate; tap into.
- Businesses are trying to tap the youth market.
- To deplete (something); to tap out.
- At the range of a couple of hundred yards we emptied our magazines, firing bullet after bullet into the beasts, but with no more effect than if we were pelting them with pellets of paper. Their slow reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springs of their lives, with no special brain...1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, “‘Our Eyes have seen Great Wonders’”, in The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC, page 274
- To ask or beg for (something) to be given for free; to cadge, to scrounge; also, to ask or beg (someone) to give something for free.
- I tried to tap a cigarette off him, but he wouldn’t give me one.
Forms of tapped
| comparative | more tapped |
|---|---|
| superlative | most tapped |
Words formed from tapped
Phrases with tapped
Words that rhyme with tapped
Questions about tapped
- What does tapped mean?
- Tapped means having a tap or taps.
- What is tapped the simple past and past participle of?
- Tapped is the simple past and past participle of tap.
- What part of speech is tapped?
- Tapped is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce tapped?
- Tapped is pronounced /tæpt/.
Words near tapped in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tapped (page history and authors); tap (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tapped.wav.
Cite this entry: “tapped.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tapped. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.