pap n.3
deceit, distastefulness; empty verbiage.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Society Snapshots 68: So if he we find here pruriency or ‘pap,’ / Our patronage denied is — verbum sap. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | (con. 1962) Enchanters 133: We [...] dispensed backslaps and Freddy’s-the-Man pap. |
In phrases
(UK Und.) to trick with the intention of causing harm.
| Pettyfogger Dramatized II i: I must do up Old Crazy, the landlord, and his neighbour. I’ve been giving them papp for some time. [Ibid.] 109: To Give Pap. To inveigle, with a view to destroy. |
a kind act performed in an unkind manner, the act of being ‘cruel to be kind’.
| [title] Pappe with an Hatchet. | |
| Pierce’s Supererogation 70: Would God, Lilly had alwaies bene Euphues, and neuer Pap-hatchet; that old acquaintance [...] is neither lullabied with thy sweete Papp, nor scarre-crowed with thy sower hatchet. | |
| Mother Bombie I iii: They give us pap with a spoone before we can speake, and when we speake for that wee love, pap with a hatchet. | |
| in Discourse of Marriage and Wiving 30: He that so old seekes for a nurse so yong, shall haue pap with a Hatchet for his comfort. | |
| Tom Nash his Ghost [title] Written by Thomas Nash his Ghost, with Pap with a Hatchet, [...] when Martin Mar-Prelate was as mad as any of his Tub-men are now. | |
| in Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 329: A Custard was to him Pap with a Hatchet. |