trap line
1
8.9
- noun
- /træp laɪn/
- Jargon
:
línea de trampas
- Mice were arranged in a staggered fashion to provide dead mice that were one to five days old on each trap line.
- run trap line
Examples
-
"We had a trap line along the U.S.-Mexican border and in central Tamaulipas, about 150 miles south of the border," recalls insect geneticist Anita M. Collins, formerly head of the Honey Bee Research Unit.
Academic text (1995) -
- No, I just ran a trap line.
-
Then the Martians had come, making it impossible for a man to run his trap lines.
Fiction book (1996) -
He left early this morning to go check his trap line.
-
Travis walks and paddles for miles every morning, running his trap line before school starts.
-
A bird biologist with the Fish and Game Department in the summer, Ellis, 53, runs three trap lines in the Matanuska Valley in the winter.
Synonyms
1
9.3
A path or area where a trapper regularly sets and checks traps to catch wild animals
How Many
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is compositionally built from 'trap' (device to catch) + 'line' (a row/route/series), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer 'a line/series of traps' or the route where traps are set. This is a common, cross-linguistic combinatory pattern (noun+noun) and therefore readily derivable from the constituents.
Etymology
The phrase trap line comes from trappers who set many animal traps in a long line through the woods and then walked that route to check each one. So trap line now means 'a series or route of traps checked regularly'.