reaped

Reaped is the past tense and past participle of the English verb reap. It means to cut or harvest grain or other crops from a field, or to gather a crop. It can also be used metaphorically to mean obtaining something as a result, such as rewards or consequences that follow actions, as in phrases like reaped the rewards or reaping what you sow.

In usage, reaped appears in both literal and figurative contexts. The present participle is reaping, and the base form is reap. The verb is typically transitive, taking a direct object when referring to crops (for example, “The field was reaped at dawn”) and also used with abstract nouns when describing outcomes or benefits (for example, “They reaped the benefits of their investment”).

Etymology traces reaped to Old English rēap, a root in the Germanic language family. It is cognate with related forms in other Germanic languages that mean to harvest or reap. Over time, the sense broadened from harvesting crops to harvesting non-physical results, yielding a common set of idioms such as “reap the rewards” and “reap what you sow.”

In agricultural contexts, reaping is the act that precedes threshing and winnowing, stages in the processing of harvested crops. In modern writing, reaped is a standard, regular past tense form and appears across literature, journalism, and everyday language to describe both literal harvests and figurative outcomes.