tapped

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of tap.

   The brewer tapped the cask for the festival crowd.

   She tapped the microphone lightly to check the sound.

   Note

   One spelling serves both past forms. The final p doubles before -ed, so she tapped the cask and the cask has been tapped. The verb behind it reaches well beyond barrels. A tapped market or talent has been opened up and exploited. A tapped-out fund has been drained. In informal speech, a friend tapped for a loan has been asked to hand something over for free.

2. 2
   adjective

   Fitted with one or more taps or spigots for drawing off liquid.

   The tapped cask let the cider flow steadily into the jugs.

   Every tapped vat in the brewery was monitored for pressure.

   Similarbroached

   Oppositeuntapped

   Note

   Kegs and casks are the obvious home of this adjective, but it stretches to anything fitted with a spout for drawing liquid off. A tapped maple tree has a spout set into it so its sap can run. Because it sits so close to the verb's past participle, a tapped keg can suggest both a keg with a tap and one already opened for drinking.

3. 3
   adjectiveslang

   Crazy or eccentric; mentally unhinged.

   Everyone said the old man was a bit tapped, talking to lampposts all day.

   She's tapped. Who else would quit a steady job on a sudden whim?

   Similarcrazy, nuts, cracked, loony

   Oppositesane

   Note

   Slang for someone thought a little crazy, most at home in teasing talk between people who like each other. It often comes with in the head. In Dorothy Preston's Getting Off the Radiator (2021), a laughing brother tells her she is tapped in the head. A bit softens it further. Keep it out of formal writing, and out of serious talk about mental illness.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of a card or playing piece, turned or marked to indicate it has been used during the current turn and cannot act again.

   Every tapped land had already been spent casting the spell.

   Her tapped creatures stayed sideways until the next untap step.

   Oppositeuntapped

   Note

   Card and board games use this word for a spent piece. Players turn a card or token ninety degrees, or mark it some other way, to show that its ability, attack or resource has been used this turn. It stays unavailable until a reset phase restores it, a step players call untapping. Tapped and untapped are the two states such a card moves between.

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