Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Biology Creeping or crawling; repent.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Creeping or crawling; repent; reptatory; reptile; specifically, of or pertaining to the Reptantia.
Wiktionary
- adj. Creeping along the ground.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Bot.) Same as Repent.
- adj. (Zoöl.) Creeping; crawling; -- said of reptiles, worms, etc.
Etymologies
- From Latin rēptō ("I creep"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin rēptāns, rēptant-, present participle of rēptāre, to creep, frequentative of rēpere. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Of cozeners, that haunt this occupation, that they cannot well tell how to live one by another, but as he jested in the Comedy of Clocks, they were so many, [2027] major pars populi arida reptant fame, they are almost starved a great part of them, and ready to devour their fellows,”
“Pulcherrima eft fepibus vivis in hortis, cuift inter topiarias noftrates nequaquam ultimo loco fit habenda, femperque virefcit: Difficilis eft transplan* tatu, quoniam fibrofae ejus radices valde fe expan - dunt, & fub fuperficie 4: erra2 reptant; cum vero fe* mel vel bis transpofita eft., facillime deinde trans - plan -”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘reptant’.
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phrontistery-r
from phrontistery.info
rya, rutilant, ruthful, rutherford, ruth, rusticity, rusticate, Russophobia, Russophile, russet, russel, rushlight and 514 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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ept
kept, wept, adept, inept, depth, scepter, exception, reception, perception, preconception, conception, inception and 74 more...
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Review
Words to study and become more familiar with.
phatic, tontine, backronym, polyptoton, fissiparous, deus ex machina, orrery, prolly, mad props, snog, oubliette, copyleft and 101 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for reptant.
knitandpurl "The tone of this voice—I've studied it in considerable depth—reproduces in sound the approximate impression made on the eye of the progress of a snail, so resplendently languorous, so lazy, so brown, so very reptant, so slimy, so gluey, and so terribly if-not-today-why-not-tomorrow."
Berlin Stories by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky, pp 48-49 of the NYRB paperback May 8, 2012
oroboros " It meticulously dissects the myriad protean tricks authoritarianism employs to maneuver its subjects into place and keep them there. Access to information and accountability for one's conduct are essential for the brave new world that might emerge if the reptant strain of authoritarianism in humankind does not destroy this world first in the name of knowing better." (from a review, on Amazon.com by Ford Greene, Esq., of The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power) Feb 24, 2010