strip

Etymology 1

From alteration of stripe or from Middle Low German strippe.

noun

1. (countable) A long, thin piece of land; any long, thin area.
   The countries were in dispute over the ownership of a strip of desert about 100 metres wide.
2. (usually countable, sometimes uncountable) A long, thin piece of any material; any such material collectively.
   Papier mache is made from strips of paper.
   Squeeze a strip of glue along the edge and then press down firmly.
   I have some strip left over after fitting out the kitchen.
   First, marinate the tofu. In a bowl, whisk the kecap manis, chilli sauce, and sesame oil together. Cut the tofu into strips about 1cm thick, mix gently (so it doesn't break) with the marinade and leave in the fridge for half an hour. 8 May 2012, Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, Random House, page 79
3. A comic strip.
4. A landing strip.
5. A strip steak.
6. (US) A street with multiple shopping or entertainment possibilities.
7. (fencing) The playing area, roughly 14 meters by 2 meters.
8. (UK, soccer) The uniform of a football team, or the same worn by supporters.
9. (mining) A trough for washing ore.
10. The issuing of a projectile from a rifled gun without acquiring the spiral motion.
    You learn, in 'Cleaning Arms,' how rust may cause a 'strip,' and how it must interfere with expansion. I need hardly say, that if the grooves be filled up, the rotation will be lost; or if the grooves be partially filled up, the rotation will be weak, 1862, Henry Charles Watson, Eight Lectures Delivered at the School of Musketry, Hythe, Being an Explanation of the 'theoretical Principles' as Laid Down in the Book of Musketry Instruction, page 78
    He has fired more than 100 rounds per barrel at a time, from nearly all the barrels converted on this system, without cleaning, and without having a strip, or failure as regards vertical accuracy. May 23, 1873, “Improved System of Rifling”, in English Mechanics and the World of Science, volume 17, number 426, page 241
    What struck me as very marvellous was that in the course of a day's firing, with so many varieties of "part" rifling, there was not a single strip; I expected to have seen some strips, for the ammunition was exceeding bad, independently of the novelty of the "part" system. 1874, J.B. O'Hea, “Rifles and Rifling”, in Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, volume 17, pages 367–368
11. (television) A television series aired at the same time daily (or at least on Mondays to Fridays), so that it appears as a strip straight across the weekly schedule.
12. (finance) An investment strategy involving simultaneous trade with one call and two put options on the same security at the same strike price, similar to but more bearish than a straddle.

Etymology 2

From Middle English strepen, strippen, from Old English strīepan (“plunder”), from Proto-Germanic *strēpōną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ter(h₁)- (“to be stiff; be rigid; exert”). Probably related to German Strafe (“deprivation, fine, punishment”).

verb

1. (transitive) To remove or take away, often in strips or stripes.
   Norm will strip the old varnish before painting the chair.
2. (usually intransitive) To take off clothing.
   Seeing that no one else was about, he stripped and dived into the river.
   The prosecution case was that the men forced the sisters to strip, threw their clothes over the bridge, then raped them and participated in forcing them to jump into the river to their deaths. As he walked off the bridge, Clemons was alleged to have said: "We threw them off. Let's go." 21 August 2012, Ed Pilkington, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian
3. (intransitive) To perform a striptease.
   In the seedy club, a group of drunken men were watching a woman stripping.
4. (transitive) To take away something from (someone or something); to plunder; to divest.
   The athlete was stripped of his medal after failing a drugs test.
   They had stripped the forest bare, with not a tree left standing.
   Don't park your car here overnight, otherwise it will be stripped by morning.
   1856, Eleanor Marx-Aveling (translator), Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part III Chapter XI He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom, her own room, remained as before.
   The lawyer and twice-divorced mother of three had presented herself as the modern face of her party, trying to strip it of unsavoury overtones after her father's convictions for saying the Nazi occupation of France was not "particularly inhumane". April 23, 2012, Angelique Chrisafis, “François Hollande on top but far right scores record result in French election”, in the Guardian
   After the confession, the lawsuits. Lance Armstrong's extended appearance on the Oprah Winfrey network, in which the man stripped of seven Tour de France wins finally admitted to doping, has opened him up to several multi-million dollar legal challenges. 19 January 2013, Paul Harris, The Guardian
   The train operating company owning group warned in early December that it was unable to publish its results for the year to July 3 2021, following an investigation into the running of Southeastern, which was stripped of its franchise in October …. January 12 2022, “Network News: Trading of Go-Ahead Group shares halted”, in RAIL, number 948, page 7
5. (transitive) To remove cargo from (a container).
6. (transitive) To remove (the thread or teeth) from a screw, nut, or gear, especially inadvertently by overtightening.
   Don't tighten that bolt any more or you'll strip the thread.
   The screw is stripped.
7. (intransitive) To fail in the thread; to lose the thread, as a bolt, screw, or nut.
8. (transitive) To fire (a bullet or ball) from a rifle such that it fails to pick up a spin from the rifling.
   Well, strange to say, it is the opinion of "Stonehenge," and other good judges, that no rifle so readily strips its ball, which consequently passes through the barrel without receiving the rotatory motion, and performs the most eccentric flights. 1859, James Dalziel Dougall, The rifle simplified, page 29
9. (intransitive) To fail to pick up a spin from the grooves in a rifle barrel.
   The number of grooves being only three, admits of these being shallow, so that the ball does not strip readily, while a further most ingenious adaptation is that the grooves be trice as deep (but, let the reader remember that such measurements are made by five-thousanths of an inch) at the breech as at the mizzle, so that the ball always becoming more compressed as it leaves the barrel. 1859, James Dalziel Dougall, The rifle simplified, page 31
10. (transitive) To remove color from hair, cloth, etc. to prepare it to receive new color.
11. (transitive, bridge) To remove all cards of a particular suit from another player. (See also strip-squeeze.)
12. (transitive) To empty (tubing) by applying pressure to the outside of (the tubing) and moving that pressure along (the tubing).
13. (transitive) To milk a cow, especially by stroking and compressing the teats to draw out the last of the milk.
14. To press out the ripe roe or milt from fishes, for artificial fecundation.
15. (television, transitive) To run a television series at the same time daily (or at least on Mondays to Fridays), so that it appears as a strip straight across the weekly schedule.
16. (transitive, agriculture) To pare off the surface of (land) in strips.
17. (transitive) To remove the overlying earth from (a deposit).
18. (transitive, obsolete) To pass; to get clear of; to outstrip.
    when first they stripp'd the Malean promontory 1618, George Chapman, A Hymn to Apollo
19. To remove the insulation from a wire/cable.
20. To remove the metal coating from (a plated article), as by acids or electrolytic action.
21. To remove fibre, flock, or lint from; said of the teeth of a card when it becomes partly clogged.
22. To pick the cured leaves from the stalks of (tobacco) and tie them into "hands".
23. To remove the midrib from (tobacco leaves).

noun

1. The act of removing one's clothes; a striptease.
   She stood up on the table and did a strip.
2. (attributively, of games) Denotes a version of a game in which losing players must progressively remove their clothes.
   strip poker; strip Scrabble
   We're going to play Strip Monopoly. 1980, Victor Miller, Friday the 13th (film)
   20 May 2018, Hadley Freeman in The Guardian, Is Meghan Markle the American the royals have needed all along? What was going to happen to this cheeky boy, suddenly deprived of his fun-loving mother, and left with his cold father who barely touched him at her funeral? For a long time – a Nazi uniform here, a game of strip billiards there – it looked like the answer was: nothing good.