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reap

verbnounattested in dialogue

  • //ˈɹiːp//
  • /[ˈɹɪi̯p]/

To cut (for example a grain) with a sickle, scythe, or reaping machine.

verb

  1. 1

    To cut (for example a grain) with a sickle, scythe, or reaping machine.

  2. 2

    To gather (e.g. a harvest) by cutting.

    And when ye reape the haruest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reape the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy haruest.

  3. 3

    To obtain or receive as a reward, in a good or a bad sense.

    to reap a benefit from exertions

    Be not deceiued, God is not mocked: for whatsoeuer a man soweth, that shall he also reape.

    Why do I humble thus my ſelf, and ſuing / For peace, reap nothing but repulſe and hate?

    And what delights can equal those ⁠That stir the spirit’s inner deeps, ⁠When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows?

  4. 4

    To terminate a child process that has previously exited, thereby removing it from the process table.

    Until a child process is reaped, it may be listed in the process table as a zombie or defunct process.

  5. 5

    obsoleteTo deprive of the beard; to shave.

    Came there a certaine Lord, neat and trimly drest; Fresh as a Bride-groome, and his Chin new reapt,

  6. 6

    slangTo rape.

Etymology

From Middle English repen, from Old English rēopan, rēpan, variants of Old English rīpan (“to reap”), from Proto-West Germanic *rīpan, from Proto-Germanic *rīpaną (compare West Frisian repe, Norwegian ripa (“to score, scratch”)), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁reyb- (“to snatch”).

noun

  1. 1

    A bundle of grain; a handful of grain laid down by the reaper as it is cut.

Forms

plural
reaps
past tense
reaped, reapt
past participle
reaped, reapt
present participle
reaping
third person singular
reaps
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).