Talk:Trap

(Electrical circuit element)
A trap in the context of electronics, is used to selectively block a range of frequencies. See 'trap dipole' on google for examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.35.45.2 (talk) 18:22, 16 June 2005‎

(Appearance and anatomical gender)
"In anime culture, a male crossdresser whose cross-dressing so convincing that he's often mistaken for a real girl." "A meme from the internet describing a man who is intending to look like an attractive woman or a pre-op male to female transsexual. Females crossdressing as males or pre-op female to male transsexuals are often referred to as reverse traps. Some consider this usage of the word to be offensive."

Aren't these basically two variant definitions of the same thing? -- 96.227.220.60 (talk) 00:58, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The first one implies that it refers only to anime characters. The two could be merged, I guess, seeing as how "trap" in this sense refers to the same concept. The first definition is more accurate, in that traps aren't merely crossdressers or TS's, but are specifically convincing ones. However, the second definition gets points for describing reverse traps. Together, the two of them have it spot-on. If no-one steps up before me, I'll merge it myself when I can think of how to phrase it best. Although, one thing I don't understand is if the term, when applied to transsexuals, is only for those who are pre-op. I've never heard that before, but then such slang and meme terms are rarely well-defined. Personally, I'd leave that bit out, in order to err on the side of caution. -- Midnight Bliss (talk) 05:13 & :28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, colleagues; i need to sleep before either figuring out how to fix what i screwed up, above this contrib, on this talk page, or convincing myself that i was just too tired to realize all i did was come close to screwing up. In either case, the above part of the first section i've been working on will make more sense in 24 hours when i've fixed and/or completed my curation of a colleague's well-meaning muddying of what an accountant would call the audit trail of the talk page. --Jerzy•t 09:26, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 'Burma!''  Specifically, the worst that was going wrong was my confusingly saving, below, a fragment out of talk that i intended to put off contributing until later, and which (in this same edit) i am striking thru, and attaching my missing sig to. --Jerzy•t 05:51, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In my direct experience the term trap only refers to a male who's features are so feminine that he is mistaken for female even when dressed as a male. This term would apply regardless of the persons sexual orientation, choices of attire, or intent toward sex transition. One thing to note is the expression is slang thus has no formal definition and often means different things to different people. 208.185.122.39 (talk) 17:03, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

What happened to this bit, it seems to have disappeared... Also, Midnight Bliss, the reason it only applies to pre-ops is that individuals are (at least intended to be) convinced that the "trap" is female and, should events progress in such a manner, if this individual sees the "trap"'s genitalia they will have been tricked, conned, hoodwinked and trapped. Such, I believe, is the cause of this stipulation, however, assuming all goes well regarding surgery, HRT and other physical aspects (voice and muscle mass and such) others will have no means of verifying whether this individual has always been female or is MtF save the individual telling them. Thus they are no longer a trap as no physical aspect can discern them from biological females (ignoring the unlikely probability of testing for XY chromosome). Also, reverse traps are not females crossdressing as males or pre-op FtMs, these are called double reverse traps (not my grammer...). Reverse traps are females crossdressing as males crossdressing as females. (A female intending to like like a (biologically male) "trap"). Why one might engage in this is beyond me, save for idle entertainment, but I don't make the slang, I just explain it. -- 86.45.244.16 (talk) 19:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)..

I don't know if it was removed or what, but I added the definition for the transsexual slang term. I didn't add a citation because nothing else on this page had one, but if some self-righteous wikipedo wants to bring down their wrath upon me, it's all over urbandictionary.com, encyclopaedia dramatica, and countless other websites that document slang and cultural memes. I know wikipedia has a vicious anti-internet bias (which is what we call "biting the hand that feeds"), but in this case the term's pervasiveness is  simply undeniable and anyone contradicting me unarguably represents everything so rightly hated in wikipedia. 96.237.59.92 (talk) 14:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC) To be precise (solely for the sake of saving effort by future checkers of sig-integrity, since our colleague fell short only by not --Jerzy•t 09:26, 1st & 05:51, 2nd August 2015 (UTC)

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trap — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.179.233.174 (talk) 20:03, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I was shocked and furious when a user (User:OlliverWithDoubleL), added it as "transphobic" slur. I don't think it is. It jokingly described anime character that looks like a female, and later revealed to be male. Mainly, this term could interchangeable with "crossdressing", where a male wears a female clothing. That's not even transphobic. Also, I want Wikipedia to be unbiased and reliable, so that it wi be trusted by many people in the internet. That's why people always said to us, "Never trust Wikipedia, it's all edited,". Thank you for my talk.  Qadri223   Talk to me like a true conservative  my contributions to the Wikipedia 02:34, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Two re-wordings
An ip colleague recently tackled an earlier 3-link entry, rewording
 * * Thought to be a pejorative term for transgender and transexual people, often used to describe men who look the same as a woman. See Passing (gender)

as
 * * Pejorative term for trans women and drag queens who can be mistaken for cis women. See Passing (gender). which does nothing toward making it acceptable.

(By the way, while cis is indeed the perfect complement to trans, only gender-/sexual-minority persons, organic chemists, and students of 19th-century European geography are like be clueful about that.) These two takes on the key issue each acknowledge the role (but not that it is the sole role) of any Dab entry (namely, to disambiguate), which imposes two requirements:
 * aiding the user in recognizing the distinction (from other senses) of the sense of the dab'd term which they have in mind, and
 * avoiding distractions that do not contribute to the task specified by the first requirement.

(Note especially that Dab entries are finding guides, not usage guides.) These imply our requirement that
 * every dab entry has exactly one blue link,
 * and it may have exactly one red link in addition, only in the (very rare) cases where we probably could link to a more pertinent future article -- which upon creation would turn the red link blue, and mandate that the older blue link be eliminated from the Dab entry.

I make no claim of being prepared to create the perfect dab entry for this sense, but my own rewording should facilitate any improvements by others, as i offer the following red+blue-link entry: Of course the entry would need rewriting once such an additional article is created, and such a red-gone-blue link's title would IMO more likely than not be rewritten to better characterize its so-far hypothetical content. If usage actually is restricted to female-seeking males, and/or other combinations (as IMO previously at least hinted), that is a matter to take up in the article, not on the dab page: i repeat, a finding guide and not a usage guide. --Jerzy•t 08:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Trap", partner potentially mistakenly chosen due to their passing for a different gender

Proposal delete or remove section "Types of traps"
This is a disambiguation-page, so intended to dab words that are spelled alike, but mean something different. The page should not dive into the meaning an sich. So the section "Types of traps" is be eliminated here: it does nothing to dab, it is only specifying "Trap" (first meaning). I have moved the list to Trap (tactic), and the items could be in the Category:Trap. -DePiep (talk) 19:47, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The usage "an sich" (roughly "in itself" or per se) is usually found in German or in philosophical discourse, including in phrases borrowed, like Ding an sich (thing in itself or ... unto itself), from German. --Jerzy•t 08:39, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

(Confusing volume)
Quite confused by the many disambiguity pages with "trap". "The trap" being another page than "trap". Perhaps a more stringent view could be found. — Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:44, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Trapping (disambiguation)
Only few of the entries on the Trapping (disambiguation) article have target articles that only/primarily use the "...ing" conjugation or even specifically mention it at all, whereas many cases the root form is just conjugated in certain grammar contexts. I removed a few. But now looking more broadly, the root trap disambiguation page also includes items that are commonly used in the "...ing" form as well as root, including the WP:PRIMARY for "trapping" itself. Makes it hard for readers/DAB-resolvers to find what they want if they have to guess at alternate grammars rather than more one-stop shop. DMacks (talk) 10:40, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Primary meaning not included?
How is it that this page doesn't lead with what is clearly the primary meaning of "trap", namely a stationary mechanical device or construction designed to capture an animal? It's the first definition in Wikitionary, as well as every other dictionary, and the first thing anyone thinks about with the term. Obviously, there are a lot of other meanings, so this should stay a DAB page, but that traps aren't linked anywhere is a baffling omission. HCA (talk) 17:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Seems to be a big omission. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.48.161 (talk) 21:07, 23 April 2018‎ (UTC)

(Trap shooting)
Article missing reference under the Sports section to Trap shooting. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_shooting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎ 67.161.48.161 (talk) 21:07, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Added. DMacks (talk) 21:15, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Body building
Within the body building community your "traps" refer to the trapezius muscle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapezius). Perhaps a noteworthy addition? 84.241.199.153 (talk) 10:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)