lovetap

See also: love tap

From love +‎ tap.

lovetap (plural lovetaps)

A light punch or other rough tap, performed in a friendly or affectionate manner.
Why am I in trouble for hitting him? It was just a lovetap! See, he's not hurt.
- 1911, S. Ella Wood Dean, Love's Purple, page 264:
  It was out of all precedent for us to do anything of that kind, for often on our honeymoon, when inspired to give him a love-tap or a fervent kiss, my husband would say: “Oh, spare me that, if there is anything more disgusting in a wife than such constant demonstrations let me know it.”
(by extension) A strike or collision with relatively little force, or causing relatively little damage.
- 1824, James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, page 363:
  Surely you forget the manner in which my hospitality has already been requited […] with a love-tap received over the shoulders of one of my men, by so gentle an instrument as the butt of a musket!
- 1967, Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur, page 97:
  She hadn’t hit her head very hard. It was only a love tap compared to some of the bone-crushing smashes I’d seen delivered against those beams.
- 2006, Dan Margulis, Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction, 5th edition, page 81:
  The car in Figure 2.7 has just been involved in an accident. […] An insurance adjuster must now decide whether this was a mere love tap or something that requires authorizing thousands of dollars for a new fender.

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