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strop

noun
/stɹɒp/UK/stɹɑp/US

Etymology

From apostrophe, due to use of apostrophes as single quotation marks to indicate boldface in ALGOL 60. Other methods were used, especially in ALGOL 68, where the earlier matched apostrophes were no longer common, and the term became used more generally for any such method.

Definitions

  1. A strap

    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.

    • Cheap razors are a mistake, as they soon lose their edge. A good razor requires no strop. It has been suggested as an excellent plan to have a case of seven razors—one for each day in the week—so that they are all equally used.

  2. A piece of rope spliced into a circular wreath, and put round a block for hanging it.

  3. 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.
  4. ›+ 4 more definitions

    1. To strap.

    2. A bad mood or temper. A tantrum.

    3. To mark a sequence of letters syntactically as having a special property, such as being a…

      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.

    4. A 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!'

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for strop. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA