
Dennis

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nap1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (np)
n.
A brief sleep, often during the day.
intr.v. napped, nap·ping, naps
To sleep for a brief period, often during the day; doze.
To be unaware of imminent danger or trouble; be off guard: The civil unrest caught the police napping.
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[Middle English, from nappen, to doze, from Old English hnappian.]
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napper n.
Word History: The famous verse 4 of Psalm 121, rendered in the King James Version as “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep,” is rendered in a Middle English translation as “Loo, ha shal not nappen ne slepen that kepeth ireal.” The word nappen is indeed the Middle English ancestor of our word nap. Lest it be thought undignified to say that God could nap, it must be realized that our word nap was at one time not associated only with the younger and older members of society nor simply with short periods of rest. The ancestors of our word, Old English hnappian and its descendant, Middle English nappen, could both refer to prolonged periods of sleep as well as short ones and also, as in the quotation from Psalm 121, to sleepiness. But these senses have been lost. Since the word has become less dignified, we would not find nap used in a modern translation of Psalm 121.
YankeeGirl wrote:I take a nap every afternoon with my baby... we go to bed late and get up kinda early... but by the mid afternoon, by the time I am done cleaning up and cooking and doing laundry, I am ready for a nap with my little girl... anyways she sleeps better when she is sleeping on me....
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