A trap is a device or tactic intended to harm, capture, detect, or inconvenience an intruder. Traps may be physical objects, such as cages or snares, or metaphorical concepts.

Trap may refer to:

Physical traps

• Animal trap, often used to obtain the fur or meat of wild animals
• Booby trap, a mechanism designed to capture or harm unsuspecting humans
• Heligoland trap, a large funnel-shaped structure used to trap birds
• Insect trap, used to capture insects
• Man-traps
• Mousetrap, designed to catch mice. See also Mousetrap (disambiguation)
• Trapdoor, a recessed (often hidden) door in a floor or ceiling

Metaphorical traps

• Canary trap, a method for exposing an information leak
• High level equilibrium trap, a concept used to explain why China never underwent an indigenous Industrial Revolution
• Honey trap, a form of sting operation in law enforcement
• Liquidity trap, a concept in economics involving a stagnant economy and low interest rates
• Speed trap, a tactic designed to catch speed limit violators; it may also refer to a place where such a tactic is commonly used
• Verbal trap, a statement or question phrased in such a way that any valid response would imply something the responder does not intend. See also Trick question
• Welfare trap, a phenomenon by which social policies interact to keep people dependent on welfare; related concepts include the unemployment trap and poverty trap

Other meanings

Other meanings of the word trap include:

• In bodybuilding, a nickname for the trapezius muscle
• In biochemistry, TRAP is an abbreviation for tartrate resistant acid phosphatase
• In computing, programming code or signal designed to capture errors and reveal where they are. More specifically, a processor-generated exception, usually resulting in a switch into kernel mode
• In electronics, a filter used to block a range of frequencies
• In geology, a rock formation in which water, salt or hydrocarbons may collect
• In horseriding, a device which attaches a carriage to a pony
• In role-playing games, a type of obstacle often used in dungeons
• In the narcotics industry, an area where drugs are bought and sold in an open-air street market. People who are major drug dealers in a trap are known as "Trap Stars"
• In plumbing, a U-shaped pipe located below a drain; also called a water seal
• In color printing, where inks of different colours have been overlapped to mask registration problems. The process is called spreading and choking
• Also in color printing, when one ink dries too much, which stops the following colors being absorbed into the paper. It leaves a mottled effect.
• In shooting sports, the activity of trap shooting, a clay target shooting sport; also, specifically the Olympic Trap event; also, the device which launches the clays
• Trap (carriage), a light two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage

Related terms

• Bot trap, a method of handling misbehaving network bots
• Fur trapper, one who traps animals for a living
• Neutral zone trap, a defensive strategy in ice hockey
• Night Trap, a 1992 video game
• The Parent Trap, the title of two Disney movies
• Penning trap, used to store charged particles
• Polar Trappers, a 1938 Disney cartoon
• Trapball, an old game played with a trap
• TRAP law, a type of legislation used to restrict abortion providers
• Trap-Neuter-Return, a method of animal control
• Trap street, a fictitious or incorrectly rendered street on a map
• Treasure Trap, a live action role-playing game
• Trivia Trap, a short-lived TV game show
• Venus Flytrap, a carnivorous plant
• Trap (novel), a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Peter Mathers

Place names

• Deccan Traps, in west-central India
• Wolf Trap, Virginia
• Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, also in Virginia

See also

• Ambush (often called a trap, as in the exclamation, "It's a trap!")
• Trapping

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