Other forms: reported, reports, reporting
To report is to tell people what happened. A journalist reports the news, a witness reports a crime, a manager reports the figures to the board. The word carries an expectation of accuracy that tell does not.
The noun is just as common and comes in fixed kinds: a school report, an annual report, a police report, a weather report. Two other senses matter at work. To report to somebody is to have them as your manager — she reports to the finance director — and a person can be your direct report. And to report somewhere is to arrive and present yourself: report to reception at nine. Notice that report a person means complain about them officially, which is a good deal stronger than mentioning them.
1verbreportTo give an account of something that happened.~13%
“Local papers reported the story the next morning.”
2nounwrittenA written or spoken account of something.~70%
“The report runs to ninety pages and an appendix.”
4verbmanagerTo have somebody as your manager.~13%
“Four people report to him.”
5nounsuddenA sudden loud noise, such as a gunshot.~2%
“There was a sharp report from somewhere in the woods.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
report is an account of what happened.
Latin reportare meant to carry back — re-, back, plus portare, to carry, the same verb behind porter, portable and export. A report is still exactly that: something carried back to the people who were not there.
Proto-Indo-European
*per- (fare)
Latin
reporto — to carry back, return, remit, refer
Anglo-Norman
reporter
Middle English
reporten
English, today
report
From Middle English reporten, from Anglo-Norman reporter, from Latin reporto (“to carry back, return, remit, refer”), from re- + porto.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA