lovetap

plural lovetaps · alternative love tap · alternative love-tap

1. A light punch or other rough tap, performed in a friendly or affectionate manner.

   Why am I in trouble for hitting him? It was just a lovetap! See, he's not hurt.

   1 more example

   It was out of all precedent for us to do anything of that kind, for often on our honeymoon, when inspired to give him a love-tap or a fervent kiss, my husband would say: “Oh, spare me that, if there is anything more disgusting in a wife than such constant demonstrations let me know it.”

   1911, S. Ella Wood Dean, Love's Purple, page 264

2. broadlyA strike or collision with relatively little force, or causing relatively little damage.

   She hadn’t hit her head very hard. It was only a love tap compared to some of the bone-crushing smashes I’d seen delivered against those beams.

   1967, Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur, page 97

   2 more examples

   Surely you forget the manner in which my hospitality has already been requited[…] with a love-tap received over the shoulders of one of my men, by so gentle an instrument as the butt of a musket!

   1824, James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, page 363

   The car in Figure 2.7 has just been involved in an accident. […] An insurance adjuster must now decide whether this was a mere love tap or something that requires authorizing thousands of dollars for a new fender.

   2006, Dan Margulis, Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction, 5th edition, page 81