sneap

present singular third person sneaps · participle present sneaping · participle past sneaped · past sneaped · alternative sneep · alternative snipe

1. UKarchaicdialectaltransitiveTo bite, nip, or pinch (someone or something).
2. UKalsoarchaicdialectalfigurativelytransitiveTo check or abruptly reprove (someone); to chide, to rebuke, to reprimand.

   Nay, I am gone. I'm a man quickly sneaped.

   1611, Thomas Middleton, The Lady's Tragedy

   3 more examples

   That vvee doe enough hate our corruptions, vvhen (at our ſharpeſt) vve doe but gently ſneape them, […]

   1623 February 12 (Gregorian calendar), Jos[eph] Hall, The Great Impostor, Laid Open in a Sermon at Grayes Inne, Febr. 2. 1623, London: […] J. Haviland for Nath[aniel] Butter, →OCLC, page 21

   But life that's here, / VVhen into it the ſoul doth cloſely vvind, / Is often ſneep'd by anguiſh and by fear, / VVith vexing pain and range that ſhe no'te eaſly bear.

   1642, H[enry] M[ore], “ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ [Antipsychopannychia], or A Confutation of the Sleep of the Soul after Death”, in ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ [Psychōdia] Platonica: Or A Platonicall Song of the Soul, […], Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Roger Daniel, printer to the Universitie, →OCLC, canto 3, stanza 18, page 26

   John, the correct one, who could make you feel sneaped. John never felt sneaped. If you were a dog, being sneaped would be the same as going off with your tail between your legs. If you were Topaz, people tried to sneap you, but you were hard to sneap. Even the proud gentle Annie, the eldest, could be sneaped by a look, but never John.

   2008, Ethel Wilson, P.K. Page, The Innocent Traveller, page 6

   Synonyms: snape

3. UKarchaicdialectalinformaltransitiveTo offend (someone); to put (someone's) nose out of joint.

   As I have often had causee to remark before, my hon. Friend, though appearing to be a hard-boiled member of the Committee is in fact very tender, and, as we say in north Staffordshire, easily sneaped or upset. He has been sneaped by the Government Whip's elevation.

   1983, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Official Report of the Standing Committees, page 683

   2 more examples

   Some days after he, in a civil manner, sent a captain with them and other soldiers to Owthorpe, to inquire into their misdemeanours before their faces; which being confirmed to him, and he beginning to rebuke them, they set him at light, even before Mrs. Hutchinson's face, and made the poor man retire sneaped to his colonel;

   1906, Lucy Hutchinson, Julius Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, page 315

   And moreover she was convinced that her mother, secretly very flattered and delighted by the visit, was adopting a derisive attitude in order to 'show off' before her daughter. Parents are thus ingenuous! But she was so shocked and sneaped that she found it more convenient to say nothing.

   1911, Arnold Bennett, Hilda Lessways

plural sneaps

1. UKarchaicdialectalobsoletetransitiveA rebuke; a reprimand.

   My Lord I will not vndergoe this ſnepe vvithout reply, […]

   c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 26