reaper
Americannoun
-
a person who reaps or a machine for reaping
-
death
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of reaper
before 1000; Middle English reper, Old English ripere. See reap, -er 1
Explanation
The noun reaper refers to a person who harvests crops. If your part-time job involves harvesting corn by hand, then you're a reaper. Reaper can also refer to a piece of farm equipment used to harvest crops, especially grains. It's not a coincidence that reap looks a lot like the word ripe. When the crops are ripe — in Old English, "ready for reaping, fit for eating" — a reaper, either human or mechanical, can harvest them. Reap means "to cut grain with a hook or sickle." This might remind you of the Grim Reaper, the personification of death in art, movies, and stories, who is shown carrying a sickle and is said to be the harvester of souls.
Vocabulary lists containing reaper
Human Geography - Middle School
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The Industrial Revolution - Introductory
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Human Geography - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But two decades on, the grim reaper still walks the rows: 110 degrees, no tree, no tarp, a single water jug growing warm, its handle slick from dust and hands.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2025
Mercifully for Edmonton, they have Leon Draisaitl, their German goal-scoring virtuoso and overtime reaper, who yet again found magic in the sudden-death stanza.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2025
When internet trolls called Doja Cat a Satanist, she cut off her hair, doused herself in fake blood, filmed a video in which she danced with the grim reaper, and called herself a "demon lord".
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2023
Ms. Council is making jam with pineapples or cantaloupe instead of peaches, and customers will have to wait until next year for her peach reaper sauce, made with Georgia peaches and Carolina reaper peppers.
From New York Times ● Jul. 6, 2023
Often he was able to enter her presence in disguise, now as a rude reaper bringing her a basket of barley-ears, now as a clumsy herdsman, or a vine-pruner.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
Chanting and singing "free the Amazon", demonstrators in host city Belém have been carrying three giant coffins reading Oil, Coal and Gas flanked by two grim reapers.
From BBC ● Nov. 15, 2025
HH: That is so true, and so necessary for fundamental change, because we need new undertakers, new reapers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 16, 2024
In 1988, her father, a retired schoolteacher, got a big order for sheets — which usually depict festive skeletons, skulls, grim reapers or Catrinas — to decorate city government offices.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 27, 2022
Memes and jokes featuring tombstones and grim reapers abounded.
From New York Times ● Jun. 15, 2022
The Amish, though they did not drive cars, used plenty of tractors, reapers, balers, and other machines, and bought their gas from Mr. Klein.
From "Z for Zachariah" by Robert C. O’Brien
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
