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• SLAP n. a gap in a wall etc.
• HAP v. to cover, to wrap up.

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SLAP n. a gap in a wall etc.

“SLAP n. a gap in a wall etc.”

10th November 2008

SLAP

This word comes from our long association with the Low Countries. It appears in Scots in the fourteenth century, meaning a gap or breach (in a wall, etc.).
Military applications are common, either referring to a breach in defensive walls or in the ranks of an opposing force as A. Dawson’s Rambling Recollections (1868) vividly illustrates: “These triumphs made many slaps in the ranks of the regiment”. More personal but no less sad, is a gruesome quotation in Sir Gilbert Hay’s fifteenth century translation of The Buike of King Allexander the Conqueroure: “He straik ane … maid him a slop so wide That all his bowellis hang furth”. Lesser injuries are described by W. Cleland (1689): “Their durks hang down between their leggs, Where they made many slopes and geggs (cuts); By rubbing on their naked side”. Sgian dhu wearers must have been greatly relieved when woolly stockings were invented.
Livestock are quick to find a slap. So, we read in the St Andrews Gazette (April 1869): ‘I see your tups comin thro’ the slap again’. Salmon also use slaps to swim up to their spawning grounds and salmon weirs and traps had to have a temporary slap left open for this purpose. On a larger scale, a slap is a hill pass, like the Cauld Stane Slap through the Pentlands.
On a much smaller scale, a seventeenth-century quotation from the Book of Dunvegan shows that a slap might even refer to a decorative hole punched in shoes: “Shoes leased with slopes”. Another usage that might be regarded as decorative recalls Chaucer’s Wife of Bath whose gap in the front teeth was a interpreted as a sign of lasciviousness. This belief was shared by a Dictionary informant (1970) who told us: “She hasna that slappie atween the teeth for naething”.