REAPER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Reaper mean? 

• REAPER (noun)
  The noun REAPER has 3 senses:

1. someone who helps to gather the harvest

2. Death personified as an old man or a skeleton with a scythe

3. farm machine that gathers a food crop from the fields

  Familiarity information: REAPER used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REAPER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who helps to gather the harvest

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

harvester; reaper

Hypernyms ("reaper" is a kind of...):

farm worker; farmhand; field hand; fieldhand (a hired hand on a farm)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "reaper"):

vintager (a person who harvests grapes for making wine)

Derivation:

reap (gather, as of natural products)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Death personified as an old man or a skeleton with a scythe

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Grim Reaper; Reaper

Instance hypernyms:

Death (the personification of death)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Farm machine that gathers a food crop from the fields

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

harvester; reaper

Hypernyms ("reaper" is a kind of...):

farm machine (a machine used in farming)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "reaper"):

binder; reaper binder (a machine that cuts grain and binds it in sheaves)

combine (harvester that heads and threshes and cleans grain while moving across the field)

header (a machine that cuts the heads off grain and moves them into a wagon)

Derivation:

reap (gather, as of natural products)

 Context examples 

At the same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind me.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

With this, the Bhut Jolokia loses its status as the world's hottest chilli, left behind by, reportedly, Carolina Reaper of the US and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion of Trinidad and Tobago.

(Scientists claim decrease in hotness of Bhut Jolokia, Wikinews)

Scared and confounded as I was, I could not forbear going on with these reflections, when one of the reapers, approaching within ten yards of the ridge where I lay, made me apprehend that with the next step I should be squashed to death under his foot, or cut in two with his reaping-hook.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)