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Glite Dictionary
around the traps

around the traps

1 9.9
People in a community spread it as gossip
  • idiom
  • UK
translation icon : por ahí
  • Have you heard anything around the traps lately?

Examples

  • News of the promotion was already around the traps before it was officially announced.

  • I heard it around the traps that Sarah got a new job.

  • I've heard around the traps that the band is getting back together.

  • Rumors about the new manager quickly spread around the traps at the office.

  • I heard some interesting news around the traps about the upcoming concert.

  • There have been rumors around the traps that a new café is opening soon.

  • The latest gossip around the traps is that they've finally settled their differences.

How Widely Known

well-known
253 1.0
around the traps
  • UK
1 9.9

Surface Forms

around the traps positive
round the traps positive

Morphology

around + the + trap

There is a recoverable logic: if a learner knows 'around' (in circulation) and the slang sense of 'trap' as a source of talk or 'mouth', then 'around the traps' can be inferred as circulating as gossip among people. However, the phrase relies on informal/regional slang and a plural/article framing that is not fully compositional or universally transparent, so a B1 learner would not reliably predict this meaning without prior exposure.

Etymology

The idiom around the traps may come from horse racing, where the traps are the gates that hold the horses before a race. People standing by the gates would pass news and gossip to each other, so the phrase now means 'heard within a local group'.