Other forms: reaping, reaped, reaps
To reap is to cut and gather a crop. Reap the harvest, reaping and sowing, reap the corn.
The literal sense is agricultural and largely historical, since combine harvesters did the job in one pass from about the 1950s. The figurative sense is much the commoner: reap the benefits, reap the rewards, reap what you sow. Note reaper, both the machine and the Grim Reaper, who carries a scythe for exactly this reason; and that you reap what you sow is one of the most quoted proverbs in English.
1verbreapTo cut and gather a crop.
“In the old days, whole villages worked together to reap the corn before the rain came.”
2verbreceiveTo receive what your actions have earned.
“After years of hard training, she is finally reaping the rewards.”
reap is a gathering in.
Old English reopan comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to snatch or tear. Reaping was tearing the crop from the ground before it was cutting it, and the word is older than the sickle.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁reyb- — to snatch
Proto-Germanic
*rīpaną
Proto-West Germanic
*rīpan
Old English
rēopan
Middle English
repen
English, today
reap
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 from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA