Sap vs. Sop — What's the Difference?

Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.

A sop is a piece of bread or toast that is drenched in liquid and then eaten. In medieval cuisine, sops were very common; they were served with broth, soup, or wine and then picked apart into smaller pieces to soak in the liquid.

The watery fluid that circulates through a plant, carrying food and other substances to the various tissues.

To dip, soak, or drench in a liquid; saturate.

See cell sap.

To take up by absorption

Health and energy; vitality

A piece of food soaked or dipped in a liquid.

(Slang) A foolish or gullible person.

Something yielded to placate or soothe

A covered trench or tunnel dug to a point near or within an enemy position.

A bribe.

A leather-covered bludgeon with a short, flexible shaft or strap, used as a hand weapon.

Something entirely soaked.

To drain (a tree, for example) of sap.

A piece of solid food to be soaked in liquid food.

To deplete or weaken gradually

Something given or done to pacify or bribe.

To undermine the foundations of (a fortification).

A weak, easily frightened or ineffectual person; a milksop

To dig a sap.

(Appalachian) Gravy.

To hit or knock out with a sap.

(obsolete) A thing of little or no value.

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

A piece of turf placed in the road as a target for a throw in road bowling.

(uncountable) The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.

(transitive) To steep or dip in any liquid.

Any juice.

(intransitive) To soak in, or be soaked; to percolate.

(figurative) Vitality.

Anything steeped, or dipped and softened, in any liquid; especially, something dipped in broth or liquid food, and intended to be eaten.

A naive person; a simpleton

Anything given to pacify; - so called from the sop given to Cerberus, as related in mythology.

A short wooden club; a leather-covered hand weapon; a blackjack.

A thing of little or no value.

(military) A narrow ditch or trench made from the foremost parallel toward the glacis or covert way of a besieged place by digging under cover of gabions, etc.

To steep or dip in any liquid.

(transitive) To drain, suck or absorb from (tree, etc.).

Piece of solid food for dipping in a liquid

To exhaust the vitality of.

A concession given to mollify or placate;

To strike with a sap (with a blackjack).

A prescribed procedure to be followed routinely;

(transitive) To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of.

Give a conciliatory gift or bribe to

To pierce with saps.

Be or become thoroughly soaked or saturated with a liquid

(transitive) To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.

Dip into liquid;

(transitive) To gradually weaken.

Mop so as to leave a semi-dry surface;

(intransitive) To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps.

Become thoroughly soaked or saturated with liquid

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

Cover with liquid; pour liquid onto;

The sapwood, or alburnum, of a tree.

A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop.

A narrow ditch or trench made from the foremost parallel toward the glacis or covert way of a besieged place by digging under cover of gabions, etc.

To subvert by digging or wearing away; to mine; to undermine; to destroy the foundation of.

To pierce with saps.

To make unstable or infirm; to unsettle; to weaken.

To proceed by mining, or by secretly undermining; to execute saps.

A watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant

A person who lacks good judgment

A piece of metal covered by leather with a flexible handle; used for hitting people

Deplete;

Excavate the earth beneath