reap
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
v.to cut and collect grain or other crops from a field when they are ready.
v.to harvest a crop by cutting it with a tool or machine. Transitive, often associated with traditional agriculture.
Simple“The farmers worked from dawn until dusk to reap the wheat before the storm arrived.”
In context“In the pre-industrial era, entire villages would gather to reap the barley by hand, ensuring the grain was stored before the autumn rains.”
UsageOften used with 'harvest' as a direct object.
- 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
v.to get something, like a benefit or a punishment, because of something you did in the past.
v.to obtain or receive something as a consequence of previous actions. Frequently appears in the idiom 'reap the benefits' or 'reap the rewards'.
Simple“After years of hard work, she is finally starting to reap the rewards of her success.”
In context“The company began to reap the benefits of its early investment in renewable energy, seeing a significant rise in quarterly profits.”
UsageCommonly used in the metaphorical phrase 'reap what you sow'.
- 03 C2 Proficiency
v.to clean up a finished computer process so it does not waste memory.
v.to acknowledge the exit status of a terminated child process, removing its entry from the system process table.
Simple“The system needs to reap the finished processes to keep the server running smoothly.”
In context“If the parent process fails to reap its children, the system may become cluttered with zombie processes that consume process IDs.”
Teacher's tipThis is a highly specialized term in Unix-like operating systems; learners will likely only encounter it in systems programming.
- 04 C2 Proficiency
n.a small bundle of grain that has just been cut.
n.a handful or bundle of grain laid down by a reaper during the harvesting process.
Simple“He left a small reap of corn on the ground for the birds to find.”
In context“The field was dotted with reaps of golden wheat, waiting to be gathered into larger sheaves for transport.”
UsageRare in modern English; primarily found in historical or agricultural texts.
Synonymsbundlesheaf
Usage reap the benefits · reaping the rewards · reap benefit
“And before we go to the moon again, let’s reap the benefits strangers in our midst offer.”
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”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.