Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A military engineer who specializes in sapping and other field fortification activities.
  • noun A military engineer who lays, detects, and disarms mines.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who saps; specifically, a soldier employed in the building of fortifications, the execution of field-works, and the performance of similar operations.
  • noun A chisel used in some sawing-machines to cut away waste or sap-wood and reduce a log to a cylindrical shape.
  • noun Any insect which sucks the sap of plants, as the rice-sapper.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who saps; specifically (Mil.), one who is employed in working at saps, building and repairing fortifications, and the like.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who saps; specifically, one who is employed in working at saps, building and repairing fortifications, and the like. Often known as a combat engineer or military engineer.
  • noun UK, colloquial an officer or private of the Royal Engineers.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a military engineer who lays or detects and disarms mines
  • noun a military engineer who does sapping (digging trenches or undermining fortifications)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From sap.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sap +‎ -er

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