tap

1. a particular quality of alcoholic drink, esp when contained in casks

2. the surgical withdrawal of fluid from a bodily cavity

3. a tool for cutting female screw threads, consisting of a threaded steel cylinder with longitudinal grooves forming cutting edges

4. Electronics chiefly US and Canadian a connection made at some point between the end terminals of an inductor, resistor, or some other component

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

tap

[tap]

(design engineering)

A plug of accurate thread, form, and dimensions on which cutting edges are formed; it is screwed into a hole to cut an internal thread.

A threaded cone-shaped fishing tool.

(electricity)

A connection made at some point other than the ends of a resistor or coil.

(engineering)

A small, threaded hole drilled into a pipe or process vessel; used as connection points for sampling devices, instruments, or controls.

(metallurgy)

A quantity of molten metal run out from a furnace at one time.

To remove excess slag from the floor of a pot furnace.

(mining engineering)

To intersect with a borehole and withdraw or drain the contained liquid, as water from a water-bearing formation or from underground workings.

tap

1. A connection to a water supply main.

2. A faucet.

3. A tool used for cutting internal threads, as in a pipe.

TAP

(1)

Telocator Alphanumeric Protocol

tap

(2)

hit

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

tap

(1) In communications, a connecting point on a line. For example, a wire tap is where a recording device is attached to a telephone line. See transceiver and bridged tap.

(2) (Amazon TAP) An Amazon Echo device. See Amazon Echo.

(3) To lightly touch a touch-sensitive screen. See double tap for more details.

(4) To press a key on a keypad.

(6) (TAP) (Telocator Alphanumeric Input Protocol) A protocol for transmitting text to a pager. Developed in the early 1980s, TAP was known as the Motorola Page Entry (PET) and IXO protocols and was adopted by Telocator, which later became the Personal Communications Industry Association (PCIA),

(5) To place a chip-based credit card near a terminal. See NFC and EMV.

The Chip Card Logo

This payment terminal screen shows a credit card being tapped to make a payment via NFC contactless communications.

Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Tap

(Screw Tap), a tool for cutting a screw thread in a previously drilled hole. A tap is a cylindrical spindle with cutting edges at one end. The other end, or shank, is designed to be fastened in a chuck or held in a tap wrench while being turned.

The main types of taps are manual taps; inside taps, for cutting a complete thread in through holes in one traverse; machine taps, for cutting threads mainly in blind holes on drilling machines, automatic machines, and special assembly-line units; machine-tool taps, for making threads in through holes on nut-tapping machines; grooveless taps, for cutting threads in through holes in one traverse; automatic taps, for cutting threads in nuts on automatic nut-tapping machines; and die and master taps, for cutting threads and thread gauges and removing the burrs in the threaded holes of circular dies. The materials used to make taps are alloy tool steel and high-speed steel.

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References in periodicals archive

'This Is Spinal Tap' continues to have legs beyond its 1984 theatrical release

The impresario of improv: Christopher Guest returns to the big screen with 'Mascots' after a 10-year absence

The child may be started on antibiotics before the results of the spinal tap are available.

Meningitis

Doe bravely picked up the pedestrian pace into the bend out of the back straight with 4f to run and was rewarded by hanging on in a three-way photo with Spinal Tap and Medieval Maiden.

Horse Racing: Sailor King completes double for Ivory; KEMPTON

For example, Lombreglia borrows Gunther's successful screenplay idea--"bars scenes, motorcycle scenes, dressing room scenes, rehearsal scenes, groupie love scenes, and the monster victory-concert scene at the end" (330)--from Rob Reiner's 1984 mock "rockumentary" This is Spinal Tap.[6] Lombreglia takes his all-important underwater scene directly from Mike Nichols's 1967 film The Graduate.

Teaching Lombreglia's Men Under Water

--Although a relatively small number of physicians find themselves actually treating bacterial meningitis, oftentimes they must rule out the disease, which means making the difficult decision of whether to perform a spinal tap.

White blood cells poor predictor of meningitis

Ash frontman Tim Wheeler is also teaming up with Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins and Har Mar Superstar for a Spinal Tap type side project called White Slave.

Radar: Mark Hamilton

The suit alleges that the emergency room medical staff at Sacred Heart was negligent for failing to properly diagnose her symptoms until it was too late; failing to do a spinal tap to test her spinal fluid, which would have told them that she had the potentially fatal condition, until it was too late; failing to prescribe antibiotics until she'd been at the hospital for nine hours; and failing to consult specialists.

PeaceHealth faces suit over death in ER

Using This Is Spinal Tap and Bob Roberts as their models, the two actor-writers enlisted Oscar winner--and former acting classmate--Mira Sorvino as producer and actor-director Griffin Dunne as director.

Almost famous

What editors Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock have assembled is a cultural studies book that splits the differance between your typical academic compendium and its self-conscious parody, merging the deadly serious (this is from the University of Minnesota Press, after all) with the quasi irreverent (the era of High Deconstruction being over, acolytes of its textual fetishism now move into their mock-u-retical Spinal Tap phase).

DIRECTOR'S CUT

The faux documentary has been done before, from the really great (This Is Spinal Tap) to the ones I would regard as really bad (The Blair Witch Project).

Moitie gauche du frigo

And I couldn't help overhearing it when he began to botch my spinal tap. "No, no--too slow!" said the attending surgeon, as the resident sucked out my spinal fluid with a syringe, then stuck another needle between the vertebrae at the base of my spine and shot me full of Novocain.

Exhaustion that Kills