sappy
/ˈsæpi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.68 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Excessively sweet, emotional, nostalgic; cheesy; mushy. (British equivalent: soppy)
American usage
adj
Having (a particularly large amount of) sap.
Example Sentences
- "He was a good deal of a character, and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling."
- "To himself, already beginning to resent the new employer as all that morning he had been resenting the old one, Dr. Planish groaned, “He’s getting saintly on me! A careerist in holiness! I'll never be happy till I've got an organization where I’m sole boss—unless it’s one run by a fellow like Colonel Marduc, who has real brains and power—and cash!—and not a lot of sappy sentimentality like Vesper or psychopathic malice like Sneaky Sandy—Oh dear!”"
- "It was a sappy love song, but it reminded them of their first dance."
- "‘Torches are made to light, jewels to wear, Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use, Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear: Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse: Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty; Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty."
- "But these, tho’ fed with careful dirt, Are neither green nor sappy; Half-conscious of the garden-squirt, The spindlings look unhappy,"
- "The sappy green twig-tips of the season’s growth would not, she thought, be appreciably woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the time; the tints of the foliage would hardly have changed."
Etymology
From Middle English sappy, sapy, from Old English sæpiġ (“full of sap, succulent”), equivalent to sap + -y. Cognate with West Frisian sappig (“juicy”), Dutch sappig (“juicy, succulent”), Middle High German saffic, seffec ("juicy, succulent"; > German saftig), Danish saftig (“juicy”), Swedish saftig (“juicy”). Doublet of zaftig.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: sappy, sæpiġ
Usage
Inflected Forms
sappier (comparative)
sappiest (superlative)
more sappy (comparative)
most sappy (superlative)
sapy (alternative)