Reapers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person or machine that cuts and gathers crops, often connected with the harvest season
2. one who brings about death or ends existence in a metaphorical sense
3. a figure symbolizing the end of life or a metaphor for mortality in literature and folklore

Etymology: "Reapers" is the plural of "reaper," a noun for a person who cuts crops, and the word's history is a plain one. It descends from Old English "rīpere," which meant the same thing and was built from "reap," the verb for cutting down a grain crop, with the agent suffix "-er" added to name the person doing the action. The word then passed through Middle English as "reper," "repare," and "repere," spellings that show how the vowel shifted over the centuries. A rare variant, "riper," survives today mainly in surnames such as Ryper and Riper, which is a reminder that many English family names were once ordinary job descriptions.

Synonyms: harvesters, mowers