whap

whap (plural whaps)

1. A blow; a hit; a variation of whop.
2. (Scotland) the curlew.

whap (third-person singular simple present whaps, present participle whapping, simple past and past participle whapped)

1. (US, transitive) To strike hard and suddenly.
2. (US, intransitive) To throw oneself quickly, or by an abrupt motion; to turn suddenly.
   • 1844, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Judge Haliburton’s Yankee Stories, Part Two, Chapter 22, Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, pp. 179-180,

     He wears his hat a little a one side, rakish-like, whaps his cane down ag’in the pavement hard, as if he intended to keep things in their place, swaggers a few, as if he though he had a right to look big […]

   • 1848, John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, New York: Bartlett & Welford, p. 379,

     TO WHAP OVER. To turn over. (New England.)

   • 1902, Henry Van Dyke, “The Mill” in The Blue Flower, New York: Scribner, p. 65,

     And at last, as they wrestled and whapped together, they fell headlong in the stream.

   • 1989, John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, New York: William Morrow, Chapter 9, p. 524,

     Screen doors whapped throughout the night […]

   She whapped down on the floor.

   The fish whapped over.

whap

1. A sudden blow; a variation of whop.

• awhape

• whap in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.