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sap

1. The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition.

The ascending is the crude sap, the assimilation of which takes place in the leaves, when it becomes the elaborated sap suited to the growth of the plant.

2. The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.

3. A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop.

(Science: botany) Sap ball, a vessel that conveys sap.

Origin: AS. Saep; akin to OHG. Saf, G. Saft, Icel. Safi; of uncertain origin; possibly akin to L. Sapere to taste, to be wise, sapa must or new wine boiled thick. Cf. Sapid, Sapient.