knap

Meaning

1. attractive, handsome, pretty
2. impressive, decent, rather good or big
3. smart, intelligent, gifted, clever
4. (archaic) lissom, agile, brisk, fresh
5. (archaic) tight-fitting, shapely
6. (archaic) tight (of a budget), scarce

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/knɑp/

Ca. 1500. A word originally found only in Dutch and Low German; compare Middle Low German knap, whence German knapp, Danish knap, Swedish knapp, all “scarce, scant”, also “tight-fitting, small” (of clothes). From the last, Dutch derived “attractive, pretty”, which was then further generalised; cf. semantically German schmücken (“to embellish", originally "to fit tightly”). Further origin unknown. Perhaps comparable to Ancient Greek κνάπτω (knáptō, “to card wool”), κνέφαλλον (knéphallon, “flock, wool”), in the sense of "tight-fitting, shapely."