taps

1. 1
   noununcountableplural

   A bugle or drum signal that orders lights out in soldiers' quarters at night, sounded shortly after tattoo and also played at military funerals.

   Like a final curtain call that signals the day's performance is finished.

   The bugler played taps as the flag came down at dusk.

   At the graveside, taps echoed across the cemetery while the casket was lowered.

   Note

   The name remembers the drum. Taps is tap with a plural -s, because the signal was first beaten out on a drum, and only later sounded by trumpet as well. The word exists only in this plural form, so the call has no singular "a tap." It is a different word from the ordinary plural of tap. It is also the partner of tattoo, which it follows by about a quarter of an hour.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of tap.

   Workers shut off the water taps during the building's renovation.

   The bar installed new taps for its seasonal beers.

   Note

   A regular plural that serves every countable kind of tap at once. It covers the pegs that stop a cask, the valves on a sink or behind a bar, and the hidden devices on a telephone line. Only context tells them apart. Taps in a plumbing aisle and taps on a phone line share nothing but their spelling and their -s.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of tap.

   The drummer taps a steady beat throughout the whole song.

   Whenever the gauge sticks, the engineer taps it to free the needle.

   Note

   Nearly every use takes a direct object: a brewer taps a cask, a doctor taps a swollen abdomen, a firm taps a new market. The figurative uses often lean on a particle, as in taps into a resource or taps out a supply. The informal begging sense can take either the thing or the person as its object: someone taps a friend for a loan.

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