/stɹɒp/, /stɹɑp/
OriginSame as strap (which see); recorded in English since 1702. The verb sense referring to honing a sharp edge is recorded since 1842.
- A strap; more specifically a piece of leather or a substitute (notably canvas), or strip of wood covered with a suitable material, for honing a razor.
- A piece of rope spliced into a circular wreath, and put round a block for hanging it.
- Commonwealth, Ireland, UKA bad mood or temper. A tantrum.
- slangA poor-quality or unsaleable diamond.
“[…] he almost fell out of the phone booth laughing and said to her, 'Boy, did my son buy a strop! Did he get stuck!'”
- To hone (a razor or knife) with a strop.
“One should strop the razor before each shave.”
“The barber—a round, bustling fellow—stropped his razor and prattled gossip.”
- obsoleteTo strap.
- To mark a sequence of letters syntactically as having a special property, such as being a keyword, e.g. by enclosing in apostrophes as in 'foo' or writing in uppercase as in FOO.
Formsstrops(plural) · strops(present, singular, third-person) · stropping(participle, present) · stropped(participle, past) · stropped(past)