Sap vs Enfeeble - What's the difference?
sap | enfeeble |
(uncountable) The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition.
(uncountable) The sap-wood, or alburnum, of a tree.
(slang, countable) A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop; a naive person.
(countable, US, slang) A short wooden club; a leather-covered hand weapon; a blackjack.
(rfimage)
(slang) To strike with a sap (with a blackjack).
(military) A narrow ditch or trench made from the foremost parallel toward the glacis or covert way of a besieged place by digging under cover of gabions, etc.
To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of.
* (rfdate)
(military) To pierce with saps.
To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.
* 1850 ,
To gradually weaken.
* to sap one’s conscience
To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps — 12
* (rfdate)
To make feeble.
* 2014 , Michael White, "
* 1774, Dr Samuel Johnson, Preface to the Works of the English Poets , J. Nichols, Volume II, Page 130,
As a noun sap
is wax.As a verb enfeeble is
to make feeble.sap
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) sap, from (etyl) ), from *''sap 'to taste'. More at sage.Noun
(wikipedia sap)Derived terms
(terms derived from sap) * crude sap * elaborated sap * sap ball * sap green * saphead * sapling * sap poison * sap rot * sapsucker * sap tubeEtymology 2
Probably from sapling.Noun
(en noun)Verb
(sapp)Etymology 3
From (etyl) saper (compare Spanish zapar and Italian zappare) from .Noun
(en noun)Derived terms
* sap fagot * sap roller * sapperVerb
(sapp)- Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapped by floods, / Their houses fell upon their household gods.
- Ring out the grief that saps the mind
- Both assaults carried on by sapping .
Anagrams
* * * * * ----enfeeble
English
Verb
(enfeebl)Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe", The Guardian , 8 September 2014:
- In the face of enfeebled , self-harming opposition on both sides of the border (and a miserable economic recession on both sides too) he has performed brilliantly.
- "...the gout, with which he had long been tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature."
