Claptrap - Theatre Etymology - Part 21

Today, the word claptrap is used to mean nonsense. We tend to like the word claptrap because of the rhyming just like when we use words or phrases such as mumbo jumbo and hoodoo to mean nonsense. However, claptrap didn't always mean nonsense.

Originally, claptrap was literally a way to trap applause that was used by actors. The first time the term (albeit as two words) appeared in print was in 1721 in Nathan Bailey's dictionary. He wrote, "A Clap Trap, a name given to the rant and rhimes that dramatick poets, to please the actors, let them get off with: as much as to say, a trap to catch a clap, by way of applause from the spectators at a play." It is thought that the compound word was made sometime between 1727 and 1731. The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology says that claptrap is a nouns and defines it as "in its earliest sense of an actor’s stage device to get applause."

By 1775, the word claptrap had started to be used to mean verbal hogwash. In Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, Edmund Burke wrote, "The members [of a political party] seek by every just method to get their party into power so that their plans may be executed. Such rivalry is easily distinguishable from a mean, selfish struggle for place and emolument. The opponents of party frequently parade as a virtue that they support "not men but measures." This is the veriest claptrap—a device to get loose from honourable engagements ; as in the case of a man who deserts his party when it loses power, and avers that he is supporting measures." By 1819, the word was in common usage as meaning hogwash or nonsense.

Around 150 years after the origin of the term, somebody did make a device that simulated applause and called it a claptrap. The word clap might come from the Middle English word clappen, the Old English word clæppan, or the Middle Low German word kleppen. The word trap might come from the Middle English word trappe (noun), or trappen (v.), the Old English word træppe (noun), or the Middle Dutch word trappe. These are akin to the Old English word treppan meaning to tread and the German word Treppe meaning staircase.

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