rep
Pluralreps
Pluralreps
- 1Short for representative.
A sales rep from the software company is coming in Thursday to demo the new version.
She wrote to her state rep about the plan to close the local hospital.
Note
The short form covers the everyday meanings of representative: the salesperson or agent who acts for a company, the person who answers when you call about tickets, and a member of a legislature, as in House of Reps. It usually takes a word for its field in front, sales rep or state rep, and Billboard in 1950 writes of diskery reps.
- 2Short for repetition.
Lower the bar slowly on every rep to keep tension on the muscle.
She finished three sets of twelve reps, then added one final rep at a heavier weight.
Note
One rep is a single controlled movement in the gym, such as lowering and raising the bar once, and a group of reps done together is a set: three sets of ten reps means ten lifts, a rest, and the same twice more. The trade a lifter weighs is load against count, less weight and more reps or the reverse.
- 3Short for reputation.
The bar has a rep for watering down its drinks.
After one viral video, her rep as a tough negotiator spread across the industry.
Note
Several different words have been clipped to rep, and context is what tells them apart: a rep to protect is a reputation, while three sets of reps belong to the gym word. Here it keeps to talk of standing among peers, such as ruin your rep or Johnny Nogerelli's I got a rep to protect in Ken Finkleman's Grease 2 (1982). Reputation stays the word for formal writing.
- 4To represent someone or something, or to act as a representative for them.
Agents who rep first-time novelists have to be patient.
For ten years she repped for a publisher of children's books, visiting stores across the Midwest.
Similarrepresent
Note
The verb takes for or a direct object with no change in meaning: Hal G. Evarts's The Settling of the Sage (1922) has a man who repped for Slade, and Bill Wyman, writing in 1994, describes an ad man who repped other magazines. It stays informal in both patterns; in formal writing, represent or act for is the safer choice.
- 5Short for representation.
Readers on the forum recommended fantasy novels with strong queer rep.
Critics argued that the studio's idea of Latino rep was a single background character.
Note
In this clipped form the word nearly always means one thing: how a group of people is shown in films, books and television. It follows the name of the group, gay rep or queer rep, and the talk is of whether a story has any, and whether it is meaningful or merely there.
- 6To lift a weight for several repetitions.
By the end of the program, I could rep 225 for eight clean lifts.
He repped the bar easily at that weight, so his coach added another plate.
Similarlift
Note
The verb grows out of the gym noun and takes the load as its object, often as a number: he can rep 225 for eight. Saying a lifter can rep a weight means moving it several times in a row, not just once, so it measures working strength rather than a single best lift.
- 7Short for replica.
On the forum, buyers post photos comparing each rep to the retail version, stitch by stitch.
He swears nobody at school can tell his rep jacket from the real thing.
Note
Streetwear buyers use it, without embarrassment, for a copy of a designer piece made to pass for the original. It often stands before a noun, as in rep sneakers, and its home is the online forum where buyers swap the best sellers and compare each rep against the retail version. Outside that world, replica or fake is the plain word.
- 8Short for repertory.
Two seasons in rep taught him to learn a new role while performing another at night.
The company keeps three plays in rep this summer, rotating them through the week.
Note
Theater people use it for the whole arrangement: a resident company presenting several plays in alternation, and the theater where that company works. Actors do their time in rep before reaching bigger stages such as the West End, and a play kept in that rotation is said to be in rep.
- 9
- 10Short for report.
Command demanded a sit rep from every company commander before dawn.
The forward observer radioed a shell rep giving the bearing of the incoming fire.
Note
Military shorthand puts the subject of the report first and the clipped word after it: a shell rep gives the fall of enemy artillery fire, a casualty rep lists losses, a sit rep sums up the situation. It lives in these combinations and is seldom used on its own. Don Congdon's Combat World War II (1996) spells one out: a shell report, or shell rep.
- 11Short for repeat.
Rep the decrease row every other row until 20 stitches remain.
Work the cable twist on row 5, then rep it every sixth row.
Note
Knitting instructions use it as an order to the knitter, followed by what to repeat and how often: rep neck dec EOR 4 times more, where dec is decrease and EOR every other row. Hannah Fettig's Closely Knit (2011) pairs two such orders with AND AT THE SAME TIME, the capitals warning that both repeats run together.
- 12A fabric of silk, wool, or silk and wool, with a surface of crosswise cords or ribs.
The upholsterer re-covered the sofa in a dark blue wool rep that would stand up to years of wear.
Her silk rep dress caught the light along every ribbed line.
Note
The fabric was once called reps; speakers took the final s for a plural ending and dropped it, leaving rep. It turns up in furnishing, usually with a color in front: green rep wainscoting in Theodore Dreiser's The Color of a Great City (1923), red rep curtains in Norman Lindsay's Redheap (1930). A Gucci rep in fashion writing is a replica, not this cloth.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
A clipping of various words beginning with rep.
A back-formation from reps, which was misinterpreted as a plural.