▪ I. ˈman-trap, n.
A trap for catching men, esp. one for catching trespassers in private grounds.
| 1788 Wolcot (P. Pindar) Peter's Pension Wks. 1812 II. 18 Your Man-traps, guards of goose and duck And cock and hens. 1791 Boswell Johnson 20 Mar. an. 1776, He should have warned us of our danger, before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertising, ‘Spring-guns and men-traps set here’. 1880 Browning Clive 24 Did no writing on the wall Warn me ‘Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!’ |
| transf. and fig. 1773 Goldsm. Stoops to Conq. iii. Wks. (Globe) 663/2 There's Mrs. Mantrap, Lady Betty Blackleg [etc.]. 1840 Dickens Barn. Rudge xiii, Mrs. Varden, regarding the Maypole as a sort of human man-trap, or decoy for husbands. 1846 Greener Sci. Gunnery 197 Were you to bawl in the ears of those employed in the construction [of certain guns],..you would not affect nor abate one, in the number of these infernal man-traps. 1857 W. Chandless Visit to Salt Lake ii. xi. 330 The planks (of the streets) worn out and broken through, leaving large holes, popularly known as ‘man-traps’. 1903 G. B. Shaw Man & Superman iii. 121 You know better than any of us that marriage is a mantrap baited with simulated accomplishments. 1922 Joyce Ulysses 425 You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander. 1929 W. Faulkner Sartoris (1932) v. ii. 365 Some new kind of mantrap [sc. an aeroplane] that flies fine—on paper. 1965 H. Sheppard Dict. Railway Slang 7 Man trap, catch points to prevent unauthorised entry from siding. 1974 P. M. Hubbard Thirsty Evil i. 9 She was no man-trap, but she did not miss much. |
▪ II. man-trap, v.
[f. the n.]
trans. To beset with man-traps. Also fig. and as ˈmantrapping ppl. a.
| 1911 J. London Son of Sun (1913) iv. iv. 159 Besides, the runs are all man-trapped—you know, staked pits, poisoned thorns, and the rest. 1952 Dylan Thomas Let. 8 Oct. (1966) 378 Every lane was mantrapped for me. c 1953 ― Ibid. 416 And eel up wheezily..from all the claws and bars and breasts of the mantrapping seabed. 1957 A. Clarke Later Poems (1961) 61 Discharge, excrete, their centuries, Man-trapped in concrete. |