sapping
noun1
The act by which something is sapped or depleted.
- December 22, 1821, Joseph Story, Address Delivered Before the Members of the New-England Society, in Charleston [The government] may be destroyed by popular violence, or the madness of party, or the deeper sappings of corruption.
2
The act of excavating trenches.
3
The act of striking with a sap or club.
- And when he had me up there he would sap me again and I wouldn't remember anything that happened in between the two sappings.1964, Raymond Chandler, Killer in the Rain: