lap

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The flat area formed by the top of your thighs when you are sitting down.

   The little boy sat on his mother's lap.

2. 2
   noun

   One complete trip around a race track or course.

   The runner sprinted on the final lap of the race.

3. 3
   verb

   To drink a liquid by taking it up with the tongue.

   The cat lapped up the milk from the bowl.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Lap originally meant a fold or flap of a garment in Old English. In the Middle Ages it came to denote the raised front of a skirt used to carry something, and then the area between the waist and knees. The racing sense arose in the mid-19th century by extending the idea of a fold to a coil or circuit; the verb meaning “drink with the tongue” has a separate Germanic origin.

From Middle English lappen (“to fold, wrap”) from earlier wlappen (“to fold, wrap”), from Old English *wlappan, *wlæppan, *wlappian (“to wrap”), from Proto-Germanic *wlapp-, *wrapp- (“to wrap, fold, roll up, turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *werb- (“to bend, turn”). Cognate with Middle Dutch lappen (“to wrap up, embrace”), dialectal Danish vravle (“to wind”), Old Italian goluppare (“to wrap, fold up”) (from Germanic). Doublet of wrap. Also related to envelop, develop. The sense of "to get a lap ahead (of someone) on a track" is from 1847, on notion of "overlapping." The noun meaning "a turn ar…

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary