Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To cut (grain or pulse) for harvest with a scythe, sickle, or reaper.
  • intransitive verb To harvest (a crop).
  • intransitive verb To harvest a crop from.
  • intransitive verb To obtain as a result of effort.
  • intransitive verb To cut or harvest grain or pulse.
  • intransitive verb To obtain a return or reward.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cut with a sickle or other implement or machine; cut down and gather: used specifically of cutting grain: as, to reap wheat or rye.
  • To cut a crop of grain, or something likened to such a. crop, from; clear by or as if by reaping.
  • Figuratively, to gather in by effort of any kind; obtain as a return or recompense; garner as the fruit of what has been done by one's self or others.
  • To perform the act or operation of reaping; cut and gather a harvest.
  • Figuratively, to gather the fruit of labor or works; receive a return for what has been done.
  • noun A sheaf of grain.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To perform the act or operation of reaping; to gather a harvest.
  • transitive verb To cut with a sickle, scythe, or reaping machine, as grain; to gather, as a harvest, by cutting.
  • transitive verb To gather; to obtain; to receive as a reward or harvest, or as the fruit of labor or of works; -- in a good or a bad sense.
  • transitive verb To clear of a crop by reaping.
  • transitive verb rare To deprive of the beard; to shave.
  • transitive verb an implement having a hook-shaped blade, used in reaping; a sickle; -- in a specific sense, distinguished from a sickle by a blade keen instead of serrated.
  • noun Obs. or Prov. Eng. A bundle of grain; a handful of grain laid down by the reaper as it is cut.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To cut with a sickle, scythe, or reaping machine, as grain; to gather, as a harvest, by cutting.
  • verb To gather; to obtain; to receive as a reward or harvest, or as the fruit of labor or of works -- in a good or a bad sense; as, to reap a benefit from exertions.
  • verb computer science Act of a parent process acknowledging that its child process has exited, thereby removing it from the process table. Until the child process is reaped it may be listed in the process table as a zombie or defunct process.
  • verb obsolete To deprive of the beard; to shave.
  • noun A bundle of grain; a handful of grain laid down by the reaper as it is cut.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb get or derive
  • verb gather, as of natural products

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English repen, from Old English rīpan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English repen, from Old English ripan, reopan, from Proto-Germanic *rīpanan (compare West Frisian repe, German reifsen ‘to snatch’, Norwegian ripa ‘to score, scratch’), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rep- ‘to snatch’ (compare Latin rapere ‘to seize, plunder’, Lithuanian aprépti 'to seize, embrace', Albanian rrjep ‘to peel, tear off’, Ancient Greek ἐρέπτομαι (eréptomai, "I feed on")).

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