Same as strap (which see); recorded in English since 1702. The verb sense referring to honing a sharp edge is recorded since 1842.
Meanings
A strap; more specifically a piece of leather or a substitute (notably canvas), or strip of wood covered with a suitable material, for honing a razor.
Cheap razors are a mistake, as they soon lose their edge. A good razor requires no strop. It has been suggested as an excellent plan to have a case of seven razors—one for each day in the week—so that they are all equally used. 1876, Eliza Bisbee Duffey, Our Behaviour: A Manual of Etiquette and Dress of the Best American Society, Philadelphia:
A piece of rope spliced into a circular wreath, and put round a block for hanging it.
bg точа на ремък (To sharpen with a strop) · sv strigla (To sharpen with a strop) · cs obtahovat (To sharpen with a strop) · nl wetten (To sharpen with a strop) · da stryge (To sharpen with a strop)
From apostrophe, due to use of apostrophes as single quotation marks to indicate boldface in ALGOL 60. Other methods were used, especially in ALGOL 68, where the earlier matched apostrophes were no longer common, and the term became used more generally for any such method.
Meanings
To mark a sequence of letters syntactically as having a special property, such as being a keyword, e.g. by enclosing in apostrophes as in 'foo' or writing in uppercase as in FOO.
[…] he almost fell out of the phone booth laughing and said to her, 'Boy, did my son buy a strop! Did he get stuck!' 2005, Renée Rose Shield, Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Street, page 156: