tappeth

Verb

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

1. (broadly, transitive) 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...
2. (transitive) 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.
   1. (informal, transitive) 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...
3. (figuratively, transitive) 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.
4. (figuratively, transitive) 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
5. (figuratively, informal, transitive) 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.

   Synonyms:

   beg, blag, bum, cadge, leech, mooch, mump, scrounge, scunge, sponge

See all 50 meanings of tap