strip

plural strips

1. countableA long, thin piece of land; any long, thin area.

   The countries were in dispute over the ownership of a strip of desert about 100 metres wide.

2. countablesometimesuncountableusuallyA long, thin piece of any material; any such material collectively.

   Papier mache is made from strips of paper.

   4 more examples

   Squeeze a strip of glue along the edge and then press down] firmly.

   I have some strip left over after fitting out the kitchen.

   At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   First, marinate the tofu. In a bowl, whisk the kecap manis, chilli sauce, and sesame oil together. Cut the tofu into strips about 1cm thick, mix gently (so it doesn't break) with the marinade and leave in the fridge for half an hour.

   2012 May 8, Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, Random House, →ISBN, page 79

   Synonyms: slip

3. countableuncountableA comic strip.
4. countableuncountableA landing strip.
5. countableuncountableA strip steak.
6. UScountableuncountableA street with multiple shopping or entertainment possibilities.
7. countableuncountablefencingThe playing area, roughly 14 meters by 2 meters.
8. UKcountableuncountableball gamesThe uniform of a football team, or the same worn by supporters.
9. countableuncountablebusinessA trough for washing ore.
10. countableuncountableThe issuing of a projectile from a rifled gun without acquiring the spiral motion.

    He has fired more than 100 rounds per barrel at a time, from nearly all the barrels converted on this system, without cleaning, and without having a strip, or failure as regards vertical accuracy.

    1873 May 23, “Improved System of Rifling”, in English Mechanics and the World of Science, volume 17, number 426, page 241

    2 more examples

    You learn, in 'Cleaning Arms,' how rust may cause a 'strip,' and how it must interfere with expansion. I need hardly say, that if the grooves be filled up, the rotation will be lost; or if the grooves be partially filled up, the rotation will be weak,

    1862, Henry Charles Watson, Eight Lectures Delivered at the School of Musketry, Hythe, Being an Explanation of the 'theoretical Principles' as Laid Down in the Book of Musketry Instruction, page 78

    What struck me as very marvellous was that in the course of a day's firing, with so many varieties of "part" rifling, there was not a single strip; I expected to have seen some strips, for the ammunition was exceeding bad, independently of the novelty of the "part" system.

    1874, J.B. O'Hea, “Rifles and Rifling”, in Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, volume 17, pages 367–368

11. countableuncountablebroadcastingA television series aired at the same time daily (or at least on Mondays to Fridays), so that it appears as a strip straight across the weekly schedule.

    ABC-TV this week put into effect its long anticipated plans to move into daytime programming in a bigger way by opening up its 4-5 across-the-board strip. The web is using its "Mickey Mouse Club," which is stoutly anchored in the 5-6 p.m. slot, as a backing up point for its afternoon expansion.

    1955, Billboard, page 5

12. countableuncountablebusinessAn investment strategy involving simultaneous trade with one call and two put options on the same security at the same strike price, similar to but more bearish than a straddle.
13. countableslanguncountableA strip club.

    You be throwing cash in the strip My lil' bitch sucking dick for the free.

    2022, Armani White, “Billie Eilish”, in Road to Casablanco

present singular third person strips · participle present stripping · participle past stripped · past stripped

1. transitiveTo remove or take away, often in strips or stripes.

   Norm will strip the old varnish before painting the chair.

2. intransitiveusuallyTo take off clothing.

   Seeing that no one else was about, he stripped and dived into the river.

   2 more examples

   The hy auter he strypte naked; There on he stode, and craked; He shoke downe all the clothys, And sware horryble othes Before the face of God, […]

   c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 63, lines 49–53

   The prosecution case was that the men forced the sisters to strip, threw their clothes over the bridge, then raped them and participated in forcing them to jump into the river to their deaths. As he walked off the bridge, Clemons was alleged to have said: "We threw them off. Let's go."

   2012 August 21, Ed Pilkington, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian

3. intransitiveTo perform a striptease.

   In the seedy club, a group of drunken men were watching a woman stripping.

4. transitiveTo take away something from (someone or something); to plunder; to divest.

   The apartment was stripped clean by the previous tenants.

   5 more examples

   The athlete was stripped of his medal after failing a drugs test.

   They had stripped the forest bare, with not a tree left standing.

   Don't park your car here overnight, otherwise it will be stripped by morning.

   They stript Joseph out of his coat.

   1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 32:23

   opinions which […] no clergyman could have avowed without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown

   1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter I, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC

5. transitiveTo remove cargo from (a container).
6. transitiveTo remove (the thread or teeth) from a screw, nut, or gear, especially inadvertently by overtightening.

   The screw is stripped.

   1 more example

   Don't tighten that bolt any more or you'll strip the thread.

7. intransitiveTo fail in the thread; to lose the thread, as a bolt, screw, or nut.
8. transitiveTo fire (a bullet or ball) from a rifle such that it fails to pick up a spin from the rifling.

   Well, strange to say, it is the opinion of "Stonehenge," and other good judges, that no rifle so readily strips its ball, which consequently passes through the barrel without receiving the rotatory motion, and performs the most eccentric flights.

   1859, James Dalziel Dougall, The rifle simplified, page 29

9. intransitiveTo fail to pick up a spin from the grooves in a rifle barrel.

   1 more example

   The number of grooves being only three, admits of these being shallow, so that the ball does not strip readily, while a further most ingenious adaptation is that the grooves be trice as deep (but, let the reader remember that such measurements are made by five-thousanths of an inch) at the breech as at the mizzle, so that the ball always becoming more compressed as it leaves the barrel.

   1859, James Dalziel Dougall, The rifle simplified, page 31

10. transitiveTo remove color from hair, cloth, etc. to prepare it to receive new color.
11. transitivebridgeTo remove all cards of a particular suit from another player. (See also strip-squeeze.)
12. transitiveTo empty (tubing) by applying pressure to the outside of (the tubing) and moving that pressure along (the tubing).
13. transitiveTo milk a cow, especially by stroking and compressing the teats to draw out the last of the milk.

    As the calves were bellowing their heads off waiting to be fed, I let them all in with their mothers for a ten-minutes ‘go’, and had considered I had done the Armytages’ cows a good turn by having them ‘stripped’.

    1933, Frank Clune, Try Anything Once, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 26

14. To press out the ripe roe or milt from fishes, for artificial fecundation.
15. transitivebroadcastingTo run a television series at the same time daily (or at least on Mondays to Fridays), so that it appears as a strip straight across the weekly schedule.
16. transitiveagricultureTo pare off the surface of (land) in strips.
17. transitiveTo remove the overlying earth from (a deposit).
18. obsoletetransitiveTo pass; to get clear of; to outstrip.

    when first they stripp'd the Malean promontory

    1618, George Chapman, A Hymn to Apollo

    1 more example

    Before he reached it he was out of breath, / And then the other stript him.

    1612–1613, Nathan Field, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Honest Mans Fortune”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act I, scene i

19. To remove the insulation from a wire/cable.
20. To remove the metal coating from (a plated article), as by acids or electrolytic action.
21. To remove fibre, flock, or lint from; said of the teeth of a card when it becomes partly clogged.
22. To pick the cured leaves from the stalks of (tobacco) and tie them into “hands”.
23. To remove the midrib from (tobacco leaves).

plural strips

1. The act of removing one's clothes; a striptease.

   She stood up on the table and did a strip.

2. attributiveDenotes a version of a game in which losing players must progressively remove their clothes.

   strip poker; strip Scrabble

   2 more examples

   We're going to play Strip Monopoly.

   1980, Victor Miller, Friday the 13th (film)

   20 May 2018, Hadley Freeman in The Guardian, Is Meghan Markle the American the royals have needed all along? What was going to happen to this cheeky boy, suddenly deprived of his fun-loving mother, and left with his cold father who barely touched him at her funeral? For a long time – a Nazi uniform here, a game of strip billiards there – it looked like the answer was: nothing good.

1. abbreviationellipsisinformalEllipsis of Gaza Strip (“Levant”).
2. abbreviationellipsisinformalEllipsis of Vegas Strip or Las Vegas Strip, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
3. abbreviationellipsisinformalEllipsis of Sunset Strip, in Los Angeles, California, USA.
4. abbreviationellipsisinformalEllipsis of Strip District, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.