transitive verb

• 1Cut or gather (a crop or harvest)

  ‘large numbers of men were employed to reap the harvest’

  More example sentences

  • ‘in terms of science, the Apollo program reaped a meager harvest’
  • ‘She lived and worked with a family of peasants, cultivating the field, planting crops, reaping the harvest.’
  • ‘With it, farmers could retain their soil and still reap a crop.’
  • ‘Last year, while fellow sweet-cherry growers were reeling from the financial blow of low yields, Kendell was reaping an impressive harvest.’
  • ‘There's little interest these days in hedgerow fruit so I suspect the birds will reap this particular harvest.’
  • ‘It seldom happens that the person who tills the ground has the wherewithal to maintain himself till he reaps the harvest.’
  • ‘They can still get money when they need it and there will still be the occasional umbrella for farmers whose incomes drop when Brazil reaps a bumper crop.’
  • ‘The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, to commemorate the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter.’
  • ‘This is contributing to the farming crisis, and deaths from starvation are likely to increase massively because farmers are too weak to plant or reap their crops.’
  • ‘Late February to mid-March is the ideal planting time. An early start improves the odds of reaping a good harvest before summer heat shuts down fruit production.’
  • ‘Some have managed to take an interest in their land and make it productive, but many have simply reaped the standing crop and then left the land derelict.’
  • ‘It's loosely based on the parable of the sower, so we have three images, a man ploughing a field, a man sowing seed and a man reaping a harvest.’
  • ‘Farming is the major industry in the area, and the challenge of reaping a harvest from this soil is a fearsome one.’
  • ‘The vineyards are organic, yields are low, and the harvest is reaped by hand, with Burgundian-style small trays for the pickers to place the grapes on, in whole bunches if possible, so that they do not bruise.’
  • ‘This dance honors the soil from which the harvest is reaped.’
  • ‘It is very hard to go against ingrained traditions that reap new harvests with a cycle of generations, over and over, until it is almost part of the should be.’
  • ‘Some farmers have been told only to reap the current harvest, but not to prepare the land for new crops.’
  • ‘Its economy was based primarily on millet, harvested with polished stone reaping knives, and on pigs, cows, and goats.’
  • ‘One day, as the men are sitting around discussing what they would do if they had any money, Wang Lung says that he will buy land from which to reap harvests.’
  • ‘For instance, in one season a farmer may apply five bags of chemical fertilisers (for paddy crop) on one acre of land and reaps 30 bags of grain.’
  • ‘And what you see each time is that the men were reaping all the fruits here.’

  Synonyms

  pick, pluck, gather

  View synonyms

  1. 1.1Harvest the crop from (a piece of land)
     ‘farmers agreed to continue reaping the land by traditional means’
     More example sentences

     • ‘It was replaced with a more local, romantic Palestinian nationalism - familiar to Europeans - that reveres the peasant and the shepherd and dreams of reaping the land.’
     • ‘The cornfields are almost all reaped.’
     • ‘As gameplay progresses, you'll place your cities, have your population grow, build wonders, armies, reap the land and generally just try to survive.’
     Synonyms

     harvest, garner, gather in, bring in, take in

     View synonyms
  2. 1.2Receive (a reward or benefit) as a consequence of one's own or other people's actions.
     ‘the company is poised to reap the benefits of this investment’
     More example sentences

     • ‘As a visiting scientist in the United States she reaped the data harvest from a new generation of seismic observatories, installed during the Cold War to monitor underground nuclear explosions.’
     • ‘At the end of fiscal 2002, when banks had reaped a bumper harvest through treasury profits, it was widely seen as a one-time affair and not expected to be repeated this year.’
     • ‘On top of that, the United States reaped a great harvest of German ideas about aerial technology with its foresighted Operation Paperclip at the end of the war.’
     • ‘Ahern also reaped a harvest of favourable editorials.’
     • ‘Three steel producers listed on the main board reaped a golden harvest last year with their results thrashing market forecasts.’
     • ‘Now Darran Gardner finds one firm hoping to reap a rich harvest from the ripe market of business intelligence’
     • ‘Both have received international recognition and reaped a harvest of prizes.’
     • ‘Meanwhile, the US Navy was reaping a rich harvest from its years of wargaming.’
     • ‘All the other farmers in the area eventually sold off their land to developers, reaping hefty paydays.’
     • ‘If a landowning nobility was to prosper, it was well advised to diversify out of land and reap some of the gain of financial, commercial, and industrial growth.’
     • ‘Indeed, both missions continue to reap benefits for us almost two years after they landed.’
     • ‘I think the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should work towards us keeping engaged and involved so that we can continue to reap something out of our labour.’
     • ‘The rich will not be able to continue to reap the profits of their investment in globalization if they do not seriously address the issues of poverty on a world scale.’
     • ‘He said that if I had nothing to hide that the I would have such money by reaping the bounty from my lands and wouldn't mind paying these taxes straight up right now.’
     • ‘As housing values have soared, builders have reaped lush margins by building on the cheap land that they acquired several years earlier.’
     • ‘But do the people truly reap the value of these public lands?’
     • ‘It is better to bring the polluters into the light than to allow them to reap profits at the expense of our air, land, and water.’
     • ‘It is for this reason that research must be allowed to continue in a way that society may reap the medical benefits, whilst limitations are put on other cosmetic aspects.’
     • ‘He could not reap extra profit from having a piece of my father's land.’
     • ‘May you continue to reap all the good things that you have sown this year.’
     Synonyms

     receive, obtain, get, acquire, secure, bring in, realize, derive, procure

     View synonyms