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Claptrap is talk that sounds big but is empty, silly, or not built on real knowledge. People use it when they think someone is talking nonsense — often loud, nonsense, like a speech full of fine words that do not mean much. It can point at a whole speech, a claim, or a way of talking. There is a small sting in it: the speaker is not only wrong, but putting on a show. It is a rather old-fashioned word; you will meet it in books and sharp comments more than in everyday chat.
廢話、空洞的漂亮話
組成clap (the sound of hitting your hands together, as when people clap at a play) + trap (a thing made to catch something). In old theatre slang, around 1730, a claptrap was a trick used on stage to make the audience clap. Later the word moved from the trick to the empty talk itself.
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
claptrapnoun/ˈklæpˌtɹæp/
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Empty verbiage or nonsense.
- Klein diagnoses impressively what hasn’t worked. No more claptrap about fracked gas as a bridge to renewables. Enough already of the international summit meetings that produce sirocco-quality hot air, and nonbinding agreements that bind us all to more emissions.
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historicalA device for producing a clapping sound in theaters.
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A device or trick to gain applause; a humbug.
- There had been a suggestion that the child should be with her [while she answers the door], but the mother herself had rejected this. "It would be stagey," she had said, "and clap-trap. There is nothing I hate so much as that."
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。