strip

Noun

strip (chiefly countable, plural strips)

1. (countable) A long, thin piece of land; any long, thin area.

   The countries were in dispute over the ownership of a strip of desert about 100 metres wide.

2. (usually countable, sometimes uncountable) A long, thin piece of any material; any such material collectively.

   Papier mache is made from strips of paper.

   Squeeze a strip of glue along the edge and then press down firmly.

   I have some strip left over after fitting out the kitchen.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.

   • 2012 May 8, Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook‎, Random House, →ISBN, page 79:

     First, marinate the tofu. In a bowl, whisk the kecap manis, chilli sauce, and sesame oil together. Cut the tofu into strips about 1cm thick, mix gently (so it doesn't break) with the marinade and leave in the fridge for half an hour.

3. A comic strip.
4. A landing strip.
5. A strip steak.
6. (US) A street with multiple shopping or entertainment possibilities.
7. (fencing) The playing area, roughly 14 meters by 2 meters.
8. (UK, soccer) The uniform of a football team, or the same worn by supporters.
9. (mining) A trough for washing ore.
10. The issuing of a projectile from a rifled gun without acquiring the spiral motion.
    • 1862, Henry Charles Watson, Eight Lectures Delivered at the School of Musketry, Hythe, Being an Explanation of the 'theoretical Principles' as Laid Down in the Book of Musketry Instruction, page 78:

      You learn, in 'Cleaning Arms,' how rust may cause a 'strip,' and how it must interfere with expansion. I need hardly say, that if the grooves be filled up, the rotation will be lost; or if the grooves be partially filled up, the rotation will be weak,

    • 1873 May 23, “Improved System of Rifling”, in English Mechanics and the World of Science, volume 17, number 426, page 241:

      He has fired more than 100 rounds per barrel at a time, from nearly all the barrels converted on this system, without cleaning, and without having a strip, or failure as regards vertical accuracy.

    • 1874, J.B. O'Hea, “Rifles and Rifling”, in Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, volume 17, pages 367–368:

      What struck me as very marvellous was that in the course of a day's firing, with so many varieties of "part" rifling, there was not a single strip; I expected to have seen some strips, for the ammunition was exceeding bad, independently of the novelty of the "part" system.

11. (television) A television series aired at the same time daily (or at least on Mondays to Fridays), so that it appears as a strip straight across the weekly schedule.
12. (finance) An investment strategy involving simultaneous trade with one call and two put options on the same security at the same strike price, similar to but more bearish than a straddle.
13. (slang) A strip club.
    • 2022, Armani White (lyrics and music), “Billie Eilish”, in Road to Casablanco:

      You be throwing cash in the strip
      My lil' bitch sucking dick for the free.

References

Verb

strip (third-person singular simple present strips, present participle stripping, simple past and past participle stripped)

1. (transitive) To remove or take away, often in strips or stripes.

   Norm will strip the old varnish before painting the chair.

2. (usually intransitive) To take off clothing.

   Seeing that no one else was about, he stripped and dived into the river.

   • c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 63, lines 49–53:

     The hy auter he strypte naked;
     There on he stode, and craked;
     He shoke downe all the clothys,
     And sware horryble othes
     Before the face of God, […]

   • 2012 August 21, Ed Pilkington, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian‎:

     The prosecution case was that the men forced the sisters to strip, threw their clothes over the bridge, then raped them and participated in forcing them to jump into the river to their deaths. As he walked off the bridge, Clemons was alleged to have said: "We threw them off. Let's go."

3. (intransitive) To perform a striptease.

   In the seedy club, a group of drunken men were watching a woman stripping.

4. (transitive) To take away something from (someone or something); to plunder; to divest.

   The athlete was stripped of his medal after failing a drugs test.

   They had stripped the forest bare, with not a tree left standing.

   Don't park your car here overnight, otherwise it will be stripped by morning.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 32:23:

     They stript Joseph out of his coat.

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter I, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     opinions which […] no clergyman could have avowed without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown

   • 1856, Eleanor Marx-Aveling (translator), Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III Chapter XI

     He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom, her own room, remained as before.

   • 2012 April 23, Angelique Chrisafis, “François Hollande on top but far right scores record result in French election”, in the Guardian‎:

     The lawyer and twice-divorced mother of three had presented herself as the modern face of her party, trying to strip it of unsavoury overtones after her father's convictions for saying the Nazi occupation of France was not "particularly inhumane".

   • 2013 January 19, Paul Harris, The Guardian‎:

     After the confession, the lawsuits. Lance Armstrong's extended appearance on the Oprah Winfrey network, in which the man stripped of seven Tour de France wins finally admitted to doping, has opened him up to several multi-million dollar legal challenges.

   • 2022 January 12, “Network News: Trading of Go-Ahead Group shares halted”, in RAIL, number 948, page 7:

     The train operating company owning group warned in early December that it was unable to publish its results for the year to July 3 2021, following an investigation into the running of Southeastern, which was stripped of its franchise in October [...].

5. (transitive) To remove cargo from (a container).
6. (transitive) To remove (the thread or teeth) from a screw, nut, or gear, especially inadvertently by overtightening.

   Don't tighten that bolt any more or you'll strip the thread.

   The screw is stripped.

7. (intransitive) To fail in the thread; to lose the thread, as a bolt, screw, or nut.
8. (transitive) To fire (a bullet or ball) from a rifle such that it fails to pick up a spin from the rifling.
   • 1859, James Dalziel Dougall, The rifle simplified, page 29:

     Well, strange to say, it is the opinion of "Stonehenge," and other good judges, that no rifle so readily strips its ball, which consequently passes through the barrel without receiving the rotatory motion, and performs the most eccentric flights.

9. (intransitive) To fail to pick up a spin from the grooves in a rifle barrel.
   • 1859, James Dalziel Dougall, The rifle simplified, page 31:

     The number of grooves being only three, admits of these being shallow, so that the ball does not strip readily, while a further most ingenious adaptation is that the grooves be trice as deep (but, let the reader remember that such measurements are made by five-thousanths of an inch) at the breech as at the mizzle, so that the ball always becoming more compressed as it leaves the barrel.

10. (transitive) To remove color from hair, cloth, etc. to prepare it to receive new color.
11. (transitive, bridge) To remove all cards of a particular suit from another player. (See also strip-squeeze.)
12. (transitive) To empty (tubing) by applying pressure to the outside of (the tubing) and moving that pressure along (the tubing).
13. (transitive) To milk a cow, especially by stroking and compressing the teats to draw out the last of the milk.
14. To press out the ripe roe or milt from fishes, for artificial fecundation.
15. (television, transitive) To run a television series at the same time daily (or at least on Mondays to Fridays), so that it appears as a strip straight across the weekly schedule.
16. (transitive, agriculture) To pare off the surface of (land) in strips.
17. (transitive) To remove the overlying earth from (a deposit).
18. (transitive, obsolete) To pass; to get clear of; to outstrip.
    • 1618, George Chapman, A Hymn to Apollo:

      when first they stripp'd the Malean promontory

    • 1612–1613, Nathan Field, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Honest Mans Fortune”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act I, scene i:

      Before he reached it he was out of breath, / And then the other stript him.

19. To remove the insulation from a wire/cable.
20. To remove the metal coating from (a plated article), as by acids or electrolytic action.
21. To remove fibre, flock, or lint from; said of the teeth of a card when it becomes partly clogged.
22. To pick the cured leaves from the stalks of (tobacco) and tie them into "hands".
23. To remove the midrib from (tobacco leaves).

Noun

strip (plural strips)

1. The act of removing one's clothes; a striptease.

   She stood up on the table and did a strip.

2. (attributively, of games) Denotes a version of a game in which losing players must progressively remove their clothes.

   strip poker; strip Scrabble

   • 1980, Victor Miller, Friday the 13th (film)

     We're going to play Strip Monopoly.

   • 20 May 2018, Hadley Freeman in The Guardian, Is Meghan Markle the American the royals have needed all along?

     What was going to happen to this cheeky boy, suddenly deprived of his fun-loving mother, and left with his cold father who barely touched him at her funeral? For a long time – a Nazi uniform here, a game of strip billiards there – it looked like the answer was: nothing good.

Synonyms

• (strip): strook
• (comic): beeldverhaal

Derived terms

• striptekenaar

Declension