''pap'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''pap'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

pap - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

pap (countable and uncountable, plural paps)

• (uncountable) Food in the form of a soft paste, often a porridge, especially as given to very young children.
  • ✤ * Pap can be made from bread boiled in milk or water.*
• (uncountable, colloquial) Pablum or nonsense.
• (South Africa) Porridge.
  • ✤ * Pap and wors are traditionally eaten at a braai.*
• (Nigeria, West Africa) A fermented cereal pudding made from corn, sorghum, or millet
• (informal, derogatory) Support from official patronage.
  • ✤ *Treasury pap *
• The pulp of fruit.
  • ✤ I hold it not amisse to take Pills in the pap of a rosted apple.¹
  • ✤ A child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple.²

Verb

pap (third-person singular simple present paps, present participle papping, simple past and past participle papped)

• (transitive, obsolete) To feed with pap.
  • ✤ But I’ll so pap him up - nothing too dear for him: What a sweet scent he has!³

Noun

pap (plural paps)

• (archaic) A female breast or nipple. [from 13th c.]
  • ✤ But th’other rather higher did arise,/And her two lilly paps aloft displayd,/And all, that might his melting hart entise/To her delights, she vnto him bewrayd […]⁴
  • ✤ they doe not onely weare jewels at their noses, in their lip and cheekes, and in their toes, but also big wedges of gold through their paps [translating tetins] and buttocks […].⁵
  • ✤ And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.⁶
  • ✤ I took the dagger out and kissed it./Like a cat’s tongue that daintily laps,/I slipped it in between her paps.⁷
• (now rare, archaic) A man’s breast. [from 15th c.]
  • ✤ Adrianus the Emperour made his Physition to marke and take the just compasse of the mortall place about his pap, that so his aime might not faile him, to whom he had given charge to kill him.⁸
• A rounded, nipple-like hill or peak.
  • ✤ the paps of Jura⁹

Noun

pap (plural paps)

• Alternative letter-case form of Pap (“Pap smear”).

Adjective

pap (comparative more pap, superlative most pap)

• (South Africa, slang) Weak, feeble; lacking substance.
  • ✤ His chest hangs like soft tits in his vest. He is pap. I could easily hit him. I could kill him if I wanted to.¹⁰
• (South Africa, slang) Spineless, wet, without character.
  • ✤ He is so pap and boring.
• (South Africa, slang) Flat.
  • ✤ I got a puncture and the wheel went pap.

Noun

pap (plural paps)

• (informal) Clipping of paparazzo.
  • ✤ As he made his way from the London hotel to his car, the singer threatened to beat up a pap who got in his way.¹¹
  • ✤ We turn back onto the main road and I’m relieved to not see any paps. They’ve got to be somewhere though. They don’t just leave.¹²
  • ✤ The only aspect of his mother’s death that he finds unforgettable is the identity of those who caused it: the press and the paps, variously referred to as ghouls, pustules, dogs, weasels, idiots and sadists, who after “torturing” his mother “would come for me”.¹³

Verb

pap (third-person singular simple present paps, present participle papping, simple past and past participle papped)

• (informal, usually passive voice) To take a surreptitious photograph of (someone, especially a celebrity) without their consent.
  • ✤ Look, that pop star’s been papped in her bikini again!
  • ✤ The star of Netflix’s Wednesday, 20-year-old Jenna Ortega (another Gen Z actor) was recently papped holding an iPhone and chuffing on a straight cigarette (the fact that this was a pap photo is all the more throwback).¹⁴
  • ✤ We know everyone else knew he was a Tier 1 sex offender because when the pair got papped on a walk in Central Park, the New York Post published the picture with a front page headline even Andrew could understand: “PRINCE & PERV”.¹⁵

Noun

pap (plural paps)

• (informal) Pa; father.
  • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: father
  • ✤ * Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river drowned, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drowned man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair—which was all like pap —but they couldn’t make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn’t much like a face at all.*¹⁶

Verb

pap (third-person singular simple present paps, present participle papping, simple past and past participle papped)

• (Internet slang, text messaging) Alternative letter-case form of PAP (“post a picture”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /pæp/
• Audio (Australian): 🔊
• Rhymes: -æp

Etymology 1

From Middle English pap. Related to Middle Low German pappe, Dutch pap, German Pappe (“pap, porridge; wheatpaste; cardboard”), Old French papa/pape, Latin pappa, Bulgarian папам (papam, “to eat”) and Serbo-Croatian папати/papati (“to eat”), among others. The relationships between these words are difficult to reconstruct. The Germanic word is either a borrowing from Latin or, perhaps more probably, an independent formation in baby-talk.

Etymology 2

From Middle English pappe, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Latin papilla; or perhaps compare Old Swedish papp (“breast, nipple”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡pap- (“nipple”), of imitative origin, or from Proto-Indo-European ﹡pap- (“pock mark, nipple”); Swedish dialectal papp, pappe, Swedish patt, Danish patte, North Frisian pap, pape, papke (“breast, pap”).

Etymology 3

Ellipsis of Pap smear.

Etymology 4

From Afrikaans pap (“porridge”).¹⁷ Cognate with etymology 1.

Pronunciation

• (General South African) IPA: /pap/

Etymology 5

Clipping of paparazzo.

Etymology 6

Compare pa, papa, pop.

Etymology 7

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1633, James Hart, The Diet of the Diseased: ↩

2. 1761, [Laurence Sterne], chapter XVI, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume III, London: […] R[obert] and J[ames] Dodsley […], →OCLC, page 72: ↩

3. c. 1619–1623, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Custome of the Countrey”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC,: ↩

4. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩

5. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, translated by John Florio, The Essayes […], London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩

6. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 11:27: ↩

7. 1907, Aleister Crowley, “Stone of the Philosophers Which Is Hidden in the Mountain of Abiegnus”, in Konx Om Pax, page 87: ↩

8. 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 13, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩

9. 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC: ↩

10. 1975, Sheila Roberts, Outside Life’s Feast: Short Stories, Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, →ISBN, page 27: ↩

11. 2015, “Justin Bieber’s top 10’s worst moments”, in OK! Magazine: ↩

12. 2015, Mira Bailee, Broken Strings: ↩

13. 2023 January 17, Tina Brown, “Spare by Prince Harry review – magical thinking in Montecito”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

14. 2023 June 16, Daisy Jones, “Cool, sexy and stinking of smoke: why are TV dramas giving cigarettes a comeback?”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[2]}$, →ISSN: ↩

15. 2025 October 17, Marina Hyde, “Punish Prince Andrew? This is no meritocracy, I’m afraid – you get the royal family you didn’t vote for”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[3]}$, →ISSN: ↩

16. 1884, Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: ↩

17. pap, adjective in the Dictionary of South African English, Rhodes University. ↩

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Secondary

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