/stræp/
[noun] A long, narrow piece of material, usually leather or fabric, used to fasten, carry, or hold things together. It can also refer to the act of securing something with such a strip.
"Strap" is simply a dialect twin of "strop" — the strip of leather barbers still use to sharpen their razors.
The word 'strap' enters the written English record in the early 17th century, but its roots reach back into a tangle of closely related Germanic dialects. It is generally considered a variant form of the older English word 'strop', which itself descended from Old English 'stropp', meaning a band or thong. That Old English form was borrowed from Latin 'stroppus', meaning a twisted band or cord, which in turn came from Greek 'strophos', meaning a twisted thing or cord, derived from the verb 'strephein', to twist. So at its deepest root, a strap is quite literally something twisted into shape.
The Latin 'stroppus' and Greek 'strophos' belonged to a world where ropes and bands were made by twisting plant fibres or animal hide together, and the word carried that physical memory of twisting and binding. Over time, as Latin spread through Europe, 'stroppus' was absorbed into the languages of the Germanic peoples along the trading routes of the North Sea and the Baltic. It became 'strop' in Low German and Dutch, and these North Sea Germanic dialects had enormous influence on the English spoken in coastal and merchant communities.
By the time the form 'strap' appears clearly in 17th-century English, it seems to have emerged as a regional dialectal variant, particularly in northern English and Scottish speech, where vowel sounds shifted and softened in characteristic ways. The two forms — 'strop' and 'strap' — lived side by side in English for centuries, doing very similar jobs. 'Strop' kept a specific, specialised meaning: the strip of leather used to sharpen a razor or knife blade, a sense that barbers and craftsmen preserved with great consistency. 'Strap', by contrast, spread outward into everyday general use, becoming the word for any narrow band used to secure or carry something.
Through the 18th and 19th centuries, 'strap' multiplied its meanings and applications with remarkable energy. It appeared in the language of sailors, soldiers, cobblers, and carriage-makers. To 'strap' something became a common verb meaning to bind or fasten it firmly. 'Straphangers' — people who held onto overhead straps on crowded trams and trains — became a vivid social type in the industrialised cities of the late 19th century, and the word captured the experience of modern urban transport in a single, satisfying image.
The word also developed figurative and idiomatic uses. To be 'strapped' for something, especially money, meaning to be tightly bound and unable to move freely, entered common speech by the 19th century. The image is of being cinched so tight there is simply no room to breathe or manoeuvre. This metaphorical extension shows how deeply the physical sensation of the strap — its tightness, its restraint, its firm grip — had embedded itself in the way English speakers thought about limitation and scarcity. From a Greek twist of cord to a modern slang word for being broke, the strap has travelled an extraordinarily long and useful road.