repeat
Verbrepeats, repeating, repeated
Noun pluralrepeats
Formsrepeats, repeating, repeated
Pluralrepeats
- 1To do or say something again, often more than once.
Could you repeat that last point? I missed it.
The teacher repeated the key formula until everyone wrote it down.
Similarreiterate, restate, redo
Note
The core of the word shows its Latin history most plainly. The prefix re- ("again") joined peto, a verb of attacking or beseeching, and reached English through Old French repeter. The object can be an act (repeat an experiment) or words passed on (won't repeat it to anyone). Used reflexively, repeat yourself means saying what you have already said, and it is usually a complaint, as when one tires of repeating oneself.
- 2To happen again; to occur once more.
Economic crises tend to repeat in roughly predictable cycles.
The pattern repeated three times before anyone noticed.
Note
Here nothing has an agent: the event itself comes round again, and repeat takes no object. It is often made reflexive, as in a day like that has not yet repeated itself. The word itself adds no second participant. It stresses that the thing recurs on its own. Compare the deliberate doing-again, where someone causes the repetition.
- 3An instance of something occurring or being done again.
The concert was a near-exact repeat of their opening night.
Officials hoped to avoid a repeat of last year's flooding.
Similarrecurrence, repetition, rerun, replay, reprise
- 4A television program broadcast again after its first showing.
The channel filled its summer schedule with repeats of old dramas.
She caught a repeat of the finale she had missed.
Similarrerun, rebroadcast
- 5To say again the words that someone else has spoken.
The interpreter repeated the witness faithfully, word for word.
Toddlers repeat adults constantly as they learn to talk.
Similarecho, parrot, mimic, quote
Note
When the object is a person rather than words, repeat means echoing what that person said: you repeat someone, not just their sentence. It Takes Guts to Be Me (2008), by Ken Jensen and Ronda Del Boccio, speaks of others repeating me. With the words themselves as object, the verb belongs to the everyday sense.
- 6A renewed supply of a medication dispensed under an existing prescription.
Her prescription came with five repeats to last the year.
He requested a repeat before his medication ran out.
Similarrefill
Note
The noun counts what a patient can collect. A prescription comes with a set number of repeats, each one a further dispensing without a fresh consultation, and patients ask for a repeat before supplies run out. The pharmacist's action is the matching verb. Here the word names the unit itself, which is why it takes numbers and plurals so easily.
- 7To dispense a further supply of a prescribed medication under an existing authorization.
The pharmacist repeated the prescription without needing a fresh order.
Pharmacists may repeat certain medications up to the limit the doctor set.
Note
In pharmacy the object is the prescription or the medication, not an action done twice. To repeat a prescription is to dispense more under the authorization already on file, so the prescriber does not need to write a new order. Its countable counterpart is the noun for a refill. The verb names what the pharmacist does, and the noun names the supply the patient receives.
- 8A notation mark instructing performers to play a section of music a second time.
The score had a repeat after the chorus, so they played it twice.
She marked a repeat in the second movement for the rehearsal.
Note
On the page it usually appears as a pair of dots beside a barline, facing the passage to be played again. The word moves easily from the sign to the instruction it carries. Performers mark a repeat, observe it, or skip it in rehearsal, and the passage between the signs is heard twice before the music continues.
- 9A sequence of nucleic acids occurring in multiple copies throughout a genome, or of amino acids within a protein.
The team sequenced a repeat that recurs thousands of times across the chromosome.
Expansion of a single repeat underlies several neurodegenerative disorders.
Note
In genetics the word names a stretch of sequence rather than an act. A repeat is the pattern itself, and each place it occurs is one of its copies. The same term serves protein biochemistry, where the repeated units are amino acids instead of nucleic acids. Researchers sequence and map repeats as objects in their own right.
- 10To commit electoral fraud by casting more than one vote for the same candidate.
Operatives bused supporters between wards to repeat throughout the day.
Several men were jailed for repeating in the disputed mayoral race.
- 11
- 12To call for a previous artillery fire mission again, with the same ammunition and method, on the same or adjusted coordinates, because the target was missed or not destroyed.
When the target survived the first salvo, the forward observer called to repeat.
"Bunker still standing. Right 50, repeat, over," the observer told the fire-direction center.
Note
Radio procedure gives the word one fixed job: it tells the guns to fire the last mission again. It often comes right after a correction to the aim, as in add 100, left 50, repeat, over. That is why an operator who missed a transmission never asks for it to be repeated. The correct phrase is say again, because repeat on the net can bring another round of artillery down.
- 13To repay or refund an amount received in excess.
The judgment required the trustee to repeat the sums wrongly drawn from the estate.
The defendant repeated the overpayment once liability was established.
Similarrepay, refund, reimburse, return
Note
Scots law keeps a meaning that has nothing to do with doing things twice: what is repeated is money. A party who has received more than was due must repeat the excess, that is, pay it back. The object is always the sum, such as the overpayment or sums wrongly drawn. That is the clue that separates it from the everyday sense when it turns up in a judgment.
- 14To undergo or encounter something again; to make trial of once more.
Note
An obsolete sense in which what is repeated is an ordeal, not an utterance. It meant going through a danger or a trial a second time. Edmund Waller, writing before 1687 in The Battel of the Summer Islands, has a man who repeats the danger of the burning town. A modern reader hears only reiteration. Outside historical pastiche, face again or undergo again are the safer choices.
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Origin
From Middle English repeten, from Old French repeter, from Latin repetere, formed from the prefix re- ("again") plus peto ("attack, beseech").