▪ I. zap, int. slang (orig. U.S.).
(zæp)
[Echoic.]
1. Used to represent the sound of a ray gun, laser, bullet, etc.; also fig., expressing any sudden or dramatic event.
| 1929 P. F. Nowlan in Washington Post 7 May 16/3 Ahead of me was one of those golden dragon Mongols, with a deadly disintegrator ray... Br-r-rr-r-z-zzz-zap. 1962 Amer. Speech XXXVII. 288 The jokester, pretending to be a creature from outer space, pointed his cosmic ray gun (finger) at his friend's genitals and exclaimed, ‘Zap! You're sterile.’ 1967 L. Deighton Only when I Larf (1968) xii. 160 Shouting idiotic things and going, ‘Whoop,’ ‘Zap,’ and ‘Yap,’ all the time. 1968 Maclean's Mag. Mar. 77 Bang! Zap! Pow! With laser beams and cracking doomsday machines, the deadly-serious super-heroes. 1970 Daily Tel. (Colour Suppl.) 15 May 34/4 I'm against the war in Vietnam. But I'm not among the people who say let's stop Vietnam, zap. 1971 Frendz 21 May 17/1 Getting down to a blow job, she suddenly produces a razor and zap—the man bleeding and gushing blood, is screaming on the floor. 1974 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12 Sept. 7/2 We have been told..we needn't worry, the sections are not being enforced. Then zap, another homosexual is denied entry for being honest. 1978 Fortune 18 Dec. 101 (Advt.), The solution receives a positive charge, the truck a negative charge. Zap! The primer and the GMC are joined with a magnetic-like bond. 1985 Parade Mag. 31 Mar. 9 A staff meeting will be Wick just shooting out those things one after another—zap, zap, zap. |
2. zap gun, a ray gun or the like.
| 1969 K. Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five iv. 65 Billy's will was paralyzed by a zap gun aimed at him from one of the portholes. 1976 Publishers Weekly 15 Mar. 59/1 Plot is subordinated to character exploration, but there's more adventure in that than in many a zap-gun epic. 1977 Sunday Sun (Brisbane) 30 Jan. 7/1 New York police have confiscated two space-age ‘zap’ guns from blind singer Stevie Wonder... The guns look like flashlights and fire two darts attached to 20 ft. thin copper wires. |
▪ II. zap, v. slang (orig. U.S.).
(zæp)
Also (rare) zapp.
[Echoic.]
I. trans.
1. a. To kill, esp. with a gun; to deal a sudden blow to.
| 1942 Berry & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §118/3 Kill; murder,..wipe out, work off, zap. 1965 Time 10 Dec. 34 Zap..means to clobber. 1966 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) Fall 6 Zap, v., to slap... I got zapped when I tried that. 1969 I. Brown Rhapsody of Words 143 In Vietnam a man knocked out was said to be zapped. 1970 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 14 Dec. 3/3 A council workman on-duty during the week zapped any rat foolish enough to wiggle a whisker within a hundred yards of the place. 1971 Sunday Times 28 Mar. 9/1 He wants to prove a Hanoi man can zapp a Saigon man. 1971 Radio Times 18 Nov. 15/4 This year the system has zapped the counter-culture member in the sneakiest way of all, by robbing him of a decent way of making a living after graduation. 1977 Time 6 June 55/2 Proto..fires a beam of electrons at the pellet, zapping it with a jolt equal to 8 trillion watts. 1979 Mod. Photogr. Oct. 64 You can't run a darkroom without plug-in power, so you'd better make it electrically safe or you might get zapped! 1981 Observer 2 Aug. 10 God is not going to zap women for coming forth. 1982 N. Freeling Wolfnight 161 Unbureaucratically, any bugger who shoots, you zap. 1984 Weekly World News (U.S.) 25 Dec. 29/1 Teenager Vickie Parker was zapped to death by 640 volts of electricity when she wandered onto the tracks of an elevated train and accidentally touched the ‘live’ third rail. 1985 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 9 May 23/3 (Advt.), In a New York restaurant, a young man celebrating with friends was zapped in the face by a man with an aerosol spray can. |
b. To put an end to, do away with.
| 1976 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 22 Apr. 21/4 We can zap a headache almost immediately. 1982 Sunday Sun-Times (Chicago) 17 Oct. 62 (heading) Atari seeks to zap X-rated video games. |
2. To fail (someone) in a test, course, etc.; to punish (see also quot. 1969).
| 1961 Amer. Speech XXXVI. 149 The cadet who is zapped is the recipient of a large number of demerits or other cadet punishments. The term was probably taken from a favorite cadet newspaper comic strip, ‘B.C.’, where zapp is used as the sound of any blow. 1969 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) Winter 12 Zap, v., to ‘put down’; to put someone in his place. 1976 National Observer (U.S.) 17 Jan. 8/5 A graduate student whose ‘scholarly potential’ is not overwhelmingly lauded ‘is going to get zapped’. |
3. To overwhelm emotionally.
| 1967 Punch 26 July 123/1 I'll be zapped with love, blow the mind of straight people. 1970 New Yorker 22 July 4/3 If the music doesn't zap you..you can contemplate..movies on the wall. 1971 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 30 May 47/1 Our politicians turn to the architects, presuming them to be the theatrical stage managers of the city to zap the masses with compelling masques and follies. 1974 A. Lurie War between Tates (1977) vi. 134 If The Book is published in time, and the right people in Washington read it, it's going to really zap them. 1977 It May 31/3 (Advt.), Bring you own sounds!!, and get zapped. 1983 Theology Jan. 15 A well-known evangelist invited the undergraduates of Oxford to allow themselves to be ‘zapped by the Holy Spirit’. |
4. To send, put, or hit in a forceful way.
| 1967 Time 22 Dec. 56 For quick acceleration..the nickel-cadmium batteries would cut in briefly, could zap the car from a standstill to 50 m.p.h. in 20 seconds. 1972 D. Delman Week to Kill 139, I nosed the car out of town and on to 118, where I zapped it into high. 1974 Farm & Country 9 Apr. 11 (heading) Computers zap farmers through space-age door. 1976 National Observer (U.S.) 29 May 12/4 Won't they be surprised when Ms. Klutz limberly zaps the ball over the net. |
5. To demonstrate against or at.
| 1972 Sat. Rev. 12 Feb. 24/1 Homosexuals..‘zap’ (confront) politicians until they express themselves..on equal housing..for homosexuals. 1980 Observer 3 Aug. 8/5 Columbia and Warner Bros. were ‘zapped’ last week; this Tuesday it's the turn of 20th Century Fox. An itinerant army of 1,000 striking actors..will parade at the old studio's grimy portals. |
6. Computers. To erase or change (an item in a program).
| 1982 Times 14 Jan. (Information Technol. Suppl.) p. v/5 When the program is erased, the PROM is said to be ‘zapped’. 1983 80 Microcomputing Jan. 29/3 On DRS 304, RB 2C you will find the byte to be 20H. Zap this to 18H. 1983 Your Computer Sept. 86/1 Since I keep a hard copy listing of the assembly of MODEM7, the easiest thing to do was to zap the offending byte. |
II. intr.
7. To move quickly and with vigour.
| 1968 Maclean's Sept. 55 Nothing is quite as sad as watching Lynn watching Lightfoot zap off out of a parking lot. 1972 Observer 27 Feb. 33/5 The well-known routine of zapping from studio to studio. 1977 Mod. Boating (Austral.) Jan. 30/3 We're zapping over Kogarah Bay with 45 miles an hour on the clock. 1981 Times 22 July 12/4 When those self-satisfied pop singers and dizzy girls from Hollywood zap in and out they are not drinking themselves silly at our expense. 1985 Times 6 Apr. 11/1 Several smaller craft zap past. |
8. To use a fast-forward facility on a video recorder to go quickly through the advertisements in a recorded television programme; to switch through other channels for the duration of the advertisements when watching programmes off-air.
| 1983 [implied in zapping vbl. n.]. 1984 Broadcast 7 Dec. 27/2 People are beginning to record the best commercial programmes on their VCRs so they can zap through the commercials. 1985 Marxism Today May 34/1 People with the technology use it to avoid commercial breaks, either by zapping through other channels or by fast-forwarding material recorded off-air. |
Hence zapped ppl. a. and pa. pple.
| 1962 Amer. Speech XXXVII. 71 ‘Zapped.’.. I first heard it in 1952 while I was an undergraduate at Brown University. The term was in vogue..to designate precisely the process by which a student..had his ‘come-uppance’ in class or on an examination. 1966 Punch 21 Dec. 911/3 Maybe truce negotiations won't be possible until the Viet Cong are zapped to the point of accepting the impossibility of military victory. 1976 National Observer (U.S.) 22 May 12/4 Despite his allure, could she really endure him? But the chap's got her zapped. 1980 R. Adams Girl in Swing xix. 254 She was pale and sweating; clearly what Mr. Steinberg would call ‘zapped’. |
Senses 6–8 in Dict. become 7–9. Add: [I.] 6. To make more powerful, exciting, etc.; to enliven, revitalize; to spice or pep up.
| 1979 N.Y. Times 18 May c14/4 A silky textured duck liver pâté was zapped with an overdose of brandy. 1982 Ad Day 4 Mar. 3 The account executive—ever the master of vague terms and confusing directions—tells the creatives they need to..‘zap it up’..‘beat some drums’..‘put some vitamins in it’. 1986 Family Circle May 5/2 How to find shoes, hats, accessories that zap last year's clothes to look like new. 1991 Independent 9 Nov. 43/5 Saab brought turbocharging to the mass market long before it became faddish to zap up the performance of shopping buggies by ramming air down their throats. |
▸ trans. colloq. (orig. U.S.). To cook (food) in a microwave oven.
| 1975 Sunset Sept. 106 Plum sauce first... Then zap your chicken in the microwave. Chicken cooked in a microwave oven becomes tender and extremely juicy. 1978 Washington Post 5 Mar. (Mag. section) 39 The corned beef was zapped to death in a microwave oven that rendered it of all its fat and turned it to stone. 1986 San Diego Union-Tribune (Nexis) 30 July 39 Fresh corn barely needs to be cooked, and I have found that the microwave does a wonderful job of preserving the flavor if you just zap it in its husk, turning it once in the process. 1998 Grocer 1 Aug. 8/2 The packaging features receptor inlays that help brown and crisp the tortillas when they are zapped in the microwave. |
▪ III. zap, n. slang (orig. U.S.).
(zæp)
[f. zap v., int.]
1. Liveliness, energy, power, drive; also, a strong emotional effect.
| 1968 N.Y. Times 2 Aug. 3 When the heat's too much and the gin's lost its zap.., tranquilize your jangled nerves with the Swinging Wonder. 1972 Publishers' Weekly 6 Mar. 62/2 As for those lyrics—probably only the over-30s will dig them. Anyone older or younger won't grasp the ‘organic’ zap of rock's years of innocence. 1975 Harpers & Queen May 128/3 The zap of his language drawn from every dialect of the underground. 1979 Chatelaine (Canada) Jan. 50 She loves sports, especially skiing, but found she had lost some of her old zap. 1979 Mod. Photogr. Oct. 68 Electricity arrives at your neighborhood at a level of 2400 [read 240] volts... If the transformers were perfect you would get precisely the 110 volts you wanted and could care less about the big zap lurking outside. 1984 New Yorker 16 Apr. 141/1 He gives the film a manic zap. |
2. A demonstration (by a group against something).
| 1972 Sat. Rev. 12 Feb. 26 Despite six zaps, New York's Mayor Lindsay has consistently refused to meet with any homosexual delegation. 1974 Times 7 Oct. 12/3 A demonstration, alternatively described as a community action or a zap, had been planned..in Brixton's Tesco supermarket. |
3. Computers. A change in a program.
| 1983 80 Microcomputing Jan. 29/1, I would like to provide the following zaps to TRSDOS 1·3 for the Model III. To provide a 30ms track stepping rate you must change the nine bytes listed below. |
4. A short, varying sound of the kind expressed by ‘zap!’
| 1984 Verbatim X. iii. 17/2 The whir of the flippers—pin-ball machines—the zaps of the video games. |
Add: 5. U.S. colloq. A charge or bolt, as of electricity; a beam or burst of radiation from a laser, etc.
| 1979 T. Wolfe Right Stuff x. 263 He would get zaps of sunlight in his face. 1979 Mod. Photogr. Oct. 68 If the transformers were perfect you would get precisely the 110 volts you wanted and could care less about the big zap lurking outside. 1982 J. Purcell From Hand Ax to Laser xi. 289 How do you drill a hole in the diamond? This was a wearying process before the laser came along, but now a simple zap suffices. 1991 Discover Mar. 56/2 When Alvarez published his theories, people snapped them up because they explained everything in one great iridium zap. |