[f. TAP v.1 + -ING1.] The action of TAP v.1 in various senses.
1597. A. M., trans. Guillemeau’s Fr. Chirurg., 20 b/2. In the drawing or tappinge of the water.
1655. Culpepper, Riverius, VII. v. 164. The Opening or Tapping for the Dropsie.
1713. Cheselden, Anat., III. x. (1726) 228 This kind of dropsie is sometimes cured by tapping.
c. 1865. J. Wylde, in Circ. Sc., I. 419/2. They are … obtained from the tree…, by the process of ‘tapping.’
1905. H. D. Rolleston, Dis. Liver, 171. A woman … eventually died after her sixtieth tapping.
1909. Installation News, II. 172/1. Alternating current … is carried into one side of the transformer giving 50 volts on the secondary at one tapping for lighting purposes, and three other tappings at 7, 121/2 and 20 volts for cooking and heating.
b. concr. That which is drawn by tapping, or runs from a tap; a means of tapping.
1597. A. M., trans. Guillemeau’s Fr. Chirurg., 53 b/1. His drinck, harshe and noughtye tappinges of wyne.
1686. Plot, Staffordsh., 17. It smelt just like the soure tappings of dead beer in a Cellar.
1862. Dana, Man. Geol., 648. All wells and springs are tappings of these subterranean waters.
c. attrib. and Comb., as tapping-apparatus (Knight, Dict. Mech., 1877); tapping-bar, a sharp-pointed crowbar used in opening the tap-hole of a furnace; tapping-clay, plastic clay used to close a tapping-hole; tapping-cock, a cock having a taper stem, which allows it to be driven firmly into an opening; tapping-drill, a drill for boring holes in water-pipes; tapping-gouge, a gouge used in tapping the sugar-maple; tapping-hole, (a) a tap-hole in a furnace; (b) a hole drilled in metal to be tapped or furnished with an internal screw-thread; tapping-iron = tapping-gouge; tapping-machine, (a) a machine for cutting internal screw-threads; (b) a machine for tapping water- or gas-mains, a tapping-drill; tapping-pot, a pot to receive liquid metal from the tap-hole; tapping-tool, (a) = TAP sb.1 4; (b) any implement for tapping the sugar-maple.
1861. Fairbairn, Iron, 133. The fire is to be carefully raked out at the *tapping hole, which is again to be made good with loam.
1894. Bowker, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 418. A channel known as the tapping-hole, taps the metal from the crucible.
1840. Gosse, Canadian Nat., vi. 68. A semicircular incision is made [in the tree] with a large iron gouge, called a *tapping iron.
