Meaning of trepan | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A tool used to bore through rock when sinking shafts.
2. Alternative spelling of trapan (“act of entrapping or tricking; thing which entraps or tricks; (archaic or obsolete) person (or occasionally an animal) that traps or tricks another into doing something that benefits them but harms the victim”)
   alt-of, alternative
3. A surgical instrument used to remove a circular section of bone from the skull; a trephine.

Equivalents

Examples

“As for all other Pretences, they are nothing but Death and Damnation, dreſſed up in Fair VVords and Falſe Shevvs; nothing but Ginns, and Snares, and Trepans for Souls; Contrived by the Devil, and Managed by ſuch as the Devil ſets on VVork.”

“Julian was hastily revolving whether they ought, in prudence, to accept⟳ this man's invitation, aware, by experience⟳, how many trepans, as they were then termed, were used betwixt two contending factions, […]”

“[O]ld associates who had once thought him [Richard Graham, 1st Viscount Preston] a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour, […] now pronounced that he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their suspicions that he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan.”

CEFR level