What is this?

That's all there is to this inane joke. I don't even know why I looked up the word. It must have been in a song. This happens every day all throughout the day, prompted by songs and by reading. 

It's just so easy because the laptop is right here, same thing with a phone. I used to have to learn the lyrics to the song, not always so easy to do and not everyone always agreed what the words are. Now I have them in front of me in seconds before the song breaks into vocals. 

Back then I would look in my analog dictionaries for the words in the song that I do not know, and I have the best dictionaries I've seen. The best. I am so proud of them. 

And now they mean nothing because now there are dozens of electronic dictionaries, good ones too, right here wherever I'm at. So now I get to see how everybody says things, not just my friends and my few books. 

But back then with my memorized songs when we'd meet at work or when I'd encounter friends next, I would run through the song in my mind picking out the words I could not find and ask them how to say them. I'd insert the new signs in my songs and be on my merry way in search of new songs to obsess. In this manner my vocabulary in this language grew over years. Now word searches are much faster, on account of the computers and slower on account of the high number of dictionaries and faster because the machines these days race like nobody's business and slower because now twenty songs are processed in the time one song did before and a lot more words come by every day without cease.

My ways of saying "trap" differs completely from this. My way is more like a bear trap, or Venus fly trap, or trap door, or a snare. I have not seen this, and if I did see this sign then I did not understand what it meant. I miss a lot. This way here is odd because the trap aggressively seeks its prey and not the prey walking into a trap. I wouldn't get that. Don't you think? I would not associate this movement with the concept of "trap." That little problem made me look up the word in all the dictionaries, just another example why word-looking-up goes so slowly anymore. This is usual. It actually all goes very quickly with good connection and fast laptop but now this happens to almost all words in this language, just to check on alternates, one word gets looked up at six places with up to a dozen or more videos. There is also YouTube, separate songs, and non-video sources.

ASL browser hosted by MSU agrees with Signing Savvy above, the sign for "trap" is made like a smart mousetrap that leaps upon its prey.

I was unsatisfied to see American dictionaries use the word for "stuck." 

Stuck is a useful word. But it is not trap.

Lifeprint does not have the word. Handspeak does not have the word, but she does have the word for "mousetrap" and here we see her "trap" is of the crocodile variety. ↓

The USA interpreter at Spreadthesign uses the word for "stuck" like ASL Pro does. So far, two separate agreements, and two no-shows. What about the rest of the countries at spreadthesign? What are their traps like? 

Czech is a crocodile trap.

Iceland is too.

So is Lithuanian.

So is Swedish, but without teeth. 

As is Turkish.

French is more clearly vertically oriented like a Venus fly-trap. ↑

Spanish "trap" is our word for "danger" or "blocked attack," a useful ASL sign.

Estonian is a more precise trap. This is our word for "exact." another useful sign. If formed with "Ps" instead of two spark plug tips then the world would be "perfect." If you want to be silly, as the people I know do, then when you touch the two "Ps" together do so precisely, as two pairs of open scissors touching at tips, closing as a stapler, both scissors close then open again back to two "Ps" touching at tips as if you stapled a paper precisely in air. Then laugh and sip your cocktail. 

Latvian. I haven't a clue. Maybe a pit with branches for covering. The sign is similar to our sign for "sit" and also similar to our sign for "salt" if they would twinkle the fingers as if sprinkling table salt.

Polish is the crocodile with a victim!

The German "trap" baffles me. It looks like a feline stalking and lunging, then an attack directly at a victim. It is our word for "close the lid on the coffin" and the jab into the palm is our word for "again" and for "a thousand." 

Ukrainian wins second place because she is so completely fierce and she describes a precise snare with loops and a trip plate the likes of which I have not seen.

British English wins first place. She has the best grabbiest trap plus she's a bit deranged.