Meaning

A tool used to bore through rock when sinking shafts..

Definitions by Sense

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.
3. (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.
4. (medicine) To use a trepan; to trephine.
5. Alternative spelling of trapan (“act of entrapping or tricking; thing which entraps or tricks; (archaic or obsolete) person (or occasionally an animal) that traps or tricks another into doing something that benefits them but harms the victim”)
6. Alternative spelling of trapan (“to catch or entrap (a person or animal) in a snare or trap; (figurative) to trap or trick (someone), especially by using some stratagem, into doing something that benefits the perpetrator but harms the victim”)

Example Sentences

As for all other Pretences, they are nothing but Death and Damnation, dreſſed up in Fair VVords and Falſe Shevvs; nothing but Ginns, and Snares, and Trepans for Souls; Contrived by the Devil, and Managed by ſuch as the Devil ſets on VVork.

Julian was hastily revolving whether they ought, in prudence, to accept this man's invitation, aware, by experience, how many trepans, as they were then termed, were used betwixt two contending factions, […]

[O]ld associates who had once thought him [Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston] a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour, […] now pronounced that he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their suspicions that he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan.

And haſt thou trepan'd me into a Tabernacle of the Godly? Is this Pious Boarding-houſe a place for me, thou vvicked Varlet?

[H]e hoped he did not intend to make uſe of him to trepan a man to his ruin.

O fie! Sir Peter,—vvhat, join in a plot to trepan my brother!

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

No, Sir, I vvill not be alone vvith you; you have infamouſly trepanned me from my friends, and I inſiſt upon being carried back to my mother, or rather left here, for vvith you I vvill not travel.

Word Forms

• trepans
• trepanning
• trepanned

Synonyms for trepan

Related Words

When Should You Use Trepan?

Use trepan when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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