rip
- 1To tear something, or to become torn, especially quickly or forcefully; also, to pull or tear something off, out, or away.
The storm ripped the shingles off half the roofs on our street.
They plan to rip up the old carpet and sand the floors underneath.
UsageOften used with up, off, out, or apart: rip up a carpet, rip off a label.
- 2
- 3To remove someone or something violently or unjustly.
Critics say the new law would rip children away from the only country they have known.
Families were ripped from their homes and sent to camps across the border.
UsageUsually rip someone from, away from, or out of a place.
- 4Short for requiescat in pace or rest in peace: said or written of someone who has died, wishing them peace.
Fans flooded the singer's page with RIP messages after the news broke.
RIP to a true gentleman who never had a bad word for anyone.
UsageWritten RIP or R.I.P., usually before the name: RIP Harambe.
Note
The letters fit Latin and English equally: requiescat in pace for one person, requiescant in pace for several, and plain rest in peace.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- RIP can represent both Latin requiescat/requiescant in pace and English rest in peace. en.wiktionary.org
- Requiescat in pace refers to one person. en.wiktionary.org
- Requiescant in pace refers to several people. en.wiktionary.org
- 5To move or act very fast and with force, often destructively, especially through a place or a task.
Tornadoes rip through this part of the plains almost every spring.
The virus ripped through the crowded prison within days.
Similartear, sweep, race, rush, hurtle
Note
The usual partner is through: a fire, a tornado or a virus rips through a place and leaves damage behind, as the flash fire did that ripped through the escalators and ticket hall of King's Cross tube station in November 1987. It can also mean simply to rush, with no damage at all, as when motorcycles rip past.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The King's Cross Underground station fire occurred in November 1987. btp.police.uk
- The fire spread through escalator components and erupted into the ticket hall in a flashover. api.parliament.uk
- 6To steal or rip off something, especially code or graphics made by someone else.
Coders who rip routines from other groups quickly lose respect in the scene.
The judges disqualified the entry after learning it had ripped its effects from an older demo.
Similarsteal, copy, lift, plagiarize
Note
Demoscene slang sharpens rip off into a charge of plagiarism: in a scene where groups compete on their own programming and art, ripping means passing off another group's code, effects or graphics as your own. Its object is the work itself, such as a 3D engine, effects code or graphics from a game, and those who do it get called lamers.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Demoscene groups compete in programming and art. en.wikipedia.org
- The demoscene condemns using others' creative work without permission or credit. scheib.net
- People who copy others' work are called lamers in the demoscene. opendl.ifip-tc6.org
- 7
- 8To copy data from a CD, DVD, online stream, or similar source onto a hard drive, portable device, or other storage.
Some apps let you rip the audio from a video stream in seconds.
He spent the weekend ripping his whole CD collection to an external hard drive.
UsageOften rip a CD to a drive. The opposite job is burn.
Similarcopy
Note
Ripping usually does more than copy: the tracks or video are turned into files a computer can play, often compressed ones such as MP3s. The opposite job, writing files onto a blank disc, is burning, and the two travel together as rip and burn.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Ripping extracts media into computer files and often involves conversion to formats such as MP3. en.wikipedia.org
- Writing media from a computer onto a blank disc is called burning. support.microsoft.com
- 9A strong outflow of surface water away from the shore that carries back the water brought in by waves; a rip current.
If a rip drags you out, float and swim parallel to the beach rather than against it.
The surfers paddled into the rip to get out past the breakers quickly.
UsageIn US beach warnings, this is usually called a rip current.
Similarriptide
Note
Travel guides sometimes gloss rips as undertows, though an undertow is a different current, and the plural is common in warnings about the rips along a stretch of coast.
- 10Something stolen or copied without permission, including a piece of work produced by plagiarism.
The artist swore the picture was his own, but everyone in the scene knew it was a rip.
Half the pixel art in that demo turned out to be rips from commercial games.
Note
In the scene's arguments, rips are named in the same breath as scans, pictures digitized rather than drawn pixel by pixel, and both are held against an artist who should be judged on skill and originality. The people who make them are rippers; the act itself is the scene's verb for stealing.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Scene discussions associate rips with scans, disparage both, and advocate judging pixel art by skill and originality. en.wiktionary.org
- Scans are images obtained through scanning rather than drawn manually pixel by pixel. en.wiktionary.org
- People accused of copying others' scene work are called rippers. pouet.net
- The verb rip means to steal in demoscene slang. en.wiktionary.org
- 11To mock or criticize someone or something, often in the phrases rip on and rip into.
Fans love to rip the front office whenever it makes a bad trade.
Late-night hosts ripped into the senator over his latest gaffe.
UsageRip on someone usually means teasing; rip into someone is a harsher attack.
Similarslam, blast, roast, criticize
Oppositepraise
- 12
Less common meanings
- 13Used informally, often humorously or ironically, to mourn something that has ended or gone, to express mild disappointment or embarrassment, or to suggest that someone is in for trouble.
RIP to the old school gym, which they finally tore down this spring.
The bakery on the corner closed after forty years. RIP, best croissants in town.
UsageThe thing follows directly or after to: RIP Vine, rip to my old phone. Lowercase rip is also common online.
Note
The blessing for the dead is borrowed here for things that have ended: an app, a restaurant, a stretch of one's own life, as in RIP Vine or rip to my Twitch days.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The figurative expression extends RIP, a blessing for the dead, to things that have ended. en.wiktionary.org
- RIP's reference to death extends figuratively to something ending or disappearing. en.wiktionary.org
- 14Audio or other data copied from a CD, DVD, internet stream, or similar source onto a hard drive, portable device, or the like.
She keeps high-quality rips of all her old CDs on an external drive.
This rip of the concert stream cuts off right before the encore.
UsageUsually named for the source: a CD rip, a DVD rip.
Similarcopy
Note
A rip is usually named for its source, so people speak of CD rips, DVD rips and stream rips, and judge them by how they were encoded, above all by the bitrate. It names the file that the copying verb produces, and it stays in casual talk.
- 15To cut wood along the grain, parallel to it rather than across it.
Rip each board to width before you cut it to length.
The carpenter ripped a long oak plank into narrow strips for the trim.
Oppositecrosscut
Note
Woodworkers set ripping against crosscutting, which goes across the grain. A rip cut runs the length of a board and makes it narrower rather than shorter. It is best done with teeth that work like small chisels, whether on a table-saw blade or on the ripsaw, the hand saw named for this cut.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Crosscutting cuts across the grain, unlike ripping. en.wikipedia.org
- A rip cut runs lengthwise along the grain. boschtools.com
- Ripping a board reduces its width. rockler.com
- Rip teeth have chisel-like cutting surfaces. en.wikipedia.org
- A ripsaw is a hand saw for cutting along the grain. en.wikipedia.org
- The name ripsaw combines rip and saw. en.wiktionary.org
- 16Short for ripsaw: a saw designed to make cuts parallel to the grain of wood.
He kept a rip and a crosscut hanging side by side above the workbench.
For long cuts down the length of a plank, the old carpenter always reached for his rip.
Note
Only the tool survives the shortening: ripsaw also names a Caribbean music played with the saw, but the short form keeps just the saw. In the workshop it pairs with the crosscut, its partner for cutting across the grain, and it counts like any noun, a rip and two rips.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Rip is a shortening of ripsaw in its tool sense. en.wiktionary.org
- Ripsaw also names a Caribbean music genre played with a saw. en.wiktionary.org
- The crosscut saw is designed for cutting across the grain. en.wikipedia.org
- 17
- 18
- 19A stretch of broken water in a river or stream, especially one less rough than rapids.
The canoes slid through a mile of easy rips before the river widened into the lake.
Below the old mill, the river breaks into shallow rips that anglers can wade.
Note
The word lives mostly in the plural and often in place names, such as Round Pond Rips and Burnt Land Rips. Gil Gilpatrick's Allagash Guide calls rips a Maine word for easy rapids: not hard ones, but water that still needs attention, because rocks and ledges have to be avoided. At sea the same family of meanings gives the rip current.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Round Pond Rips is a named stretch of river. maine.gov
- Burnt Land Rips is an established place name. eastmillinocket.org
- Gil Gilpatrick wrote The Allagash Guide. foxchapelpublishing.com
- The Allagash Guide describes rips as a Maine word for easy rapids that require attention to avoid rocks and ledges. en.wiktionary.org
- Rip current denotes a related coastal water-flow phenomenon. en.wiktionary.org
- 20An act of breaking wind; a fart.
Someone in the back row let out a rip during the exam, and the smell reached the front in seconds.
After a bowl of bean chili, the dog's rips could clear a room.
Similarfart
- 21To pass gas from the bowels loudly enough to be heard.
Somebody ripped one during the quietest scene of the movie, and the whole row groaned.
The old dog tends to rip a loud one whenever guests sit down to dinner.
UsageUsually rip one or rip a loud one. In polite company, say break wind.
- 22Short for rest in piss: a mocking twist on rest in peace, aimed at a disliked person who has died or met with misfortune.
Note
The letters are identical to the blessing for the dead, so only tone and context reveal the mocking reading, aimed at someone dead or brought low by misfortune. It is meant to wound or to get a laugh at the target's expense, and anyone who is grieving will hear it as an insult.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- RIP represents both the blessing for the dead and rest in piss, so the initial letters are identical. en.wiktionary.org
- 23An event or action that is comical, embarrassing, or hypocritical.
- 24A type of glissando that slides upward into the main note to be played.
- 25To tear open or dig into something to examine, change, or reveal it, usually with up, as in ripping up old grievances.
They ripped up all that had been done from the beginning of the rebellion.
Can we date this quote?, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England - 26A black mark recorded against a pupil whose schoolwork falls below the expected standard.
- 27A ride or drive in a motor vehicle taken purely for fun.
- 28An old or worn-out horse of little value.
- 29A man of loose morals, a rogue or libertine.
Miss Compton, in 'Other People's Worries,' asks rhetorically whether a young rip was not in the Blank divorce case.
1922, The Saturday Review - 30A small bundle of grain stalks that have not yet been threshed.
- 31A man's first name that comes from Dutch, as in Rip Van Winkle.
- 32Short form used as a nickname for someone called Ripley.
- 33Abbreviation of rest in power, said in honor of someone who has died, especially an activist or a victim of injustice.
- 34Short for Routing Information Protocol, a standard method computer networks use to share and update routes between routers.
- 35A genetic process in some fungi, called repeat-induced point mutation, that introduces mutations into duplicated stretches of DNA.
- 36Short for reduction in pay, a cut in someone's wages.
- 37Short for ribosome-inactivating protein, a toxin that damages ribosomes and so stops cells making proteins.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Middle English rippen came from earlier ryppen ("to pluck"). Behind it is Proto-Germanic *rupjaną or *ruppōną, probably from Proto-Indo-European *Hrewp- ("to break"). Relatives include West Frisian rippe, Low German ruppen, German rupfen and raufen ("to rip"), and English reave and rob.
From the Latin initials RIP, for requiescat in pace ("may he or she rest in peace"), which also fit the English rest in peace.