trepan

• IPA^(key): /tɹɪˈpæn/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æn
• Hyphenation: tre‧pan

Borrowed into Middle English from Old French trepan, from Latin trepanum, from Ancient Greek τρύπανον (trúpanon, “auger, borer”). Doublet of trephine.

trepan (plural trepans)

1. A tool used to bore through rock when sinking shafts.
2. (medicine) A surgical instrument used to remove a circular section of bone from the skull; a trephine.

• hole saw

Coal cutting machine (trepanner) that undercuts the coal seam.

trepan (third-person singular simple present trepans, present participle trepanning or trepaning, simple past and past participle trepanned or trepaned)

1. (transitive, manufacturing, mining) To create a large hole by making a narrow groove outlining the shape of the hole and then removing the plug of material remaining by less expensive means.
2. (medicine) To use a trepan; to trephine.

Possibly from Old English treppan (“to trap”).

trepan (plural trepans)

1. (archaic) A trickster.
   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 17, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     He had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan.

2. (archaic) A snare; a trapan.
   • 1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 6th edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] J[ames] Bettenham, for Jonah Bowyer, […], published 1727, →OCLC:

     Snares and trepans that common life lays in its way.

trepan (third-person singular simple present trepans, present participle trepanning, simple past and past participle trepanned)

1. (archaic) To ensnare; to seduce, to trick.
   • 1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, IV.iii:

     O Fie—Sir Peter—would you have ME join in so mean a Trick? to trepan my Brother too?

   • 1796, J[ohn] G[abriel] Stedman, chapter XVII, in Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America; […], volume II, London: J[oseph] Johnson, […], and J. Edwards, […], →OCLC, page 28:

     Among his men I recollected one Cordus, a gentleman's ſon from Hamburgh, in which character I had known him, and who had been trepanned into the Weſt India Company's ſervice by the crimps or ſilver-coopers as a common ſoldier.

   • 1798 Charlotte Turner Smith: The Young Philosopher. Vol.4, Chapter 9.

     […] a post-chaise, into which he had so infamously trepanned me […]

   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC:

     “In the plain meaning of the word, sir,” said I. “I was on my way to your house, when I was trepanned on board the brig, cruelly struck down, thrown below, and knew no more of anything till we were far at sea. I was destined for the plantations; a fate that, in God’s providence, I have escaped.”

• -pteran, Panter, Parten, arpent, enrapt, entrap, panter, parent

trepan

1. third-person plural present indicative of trepar

trepan

1. third-person plural present indicative of trepar