[rap] 
verb, rapped, rap⋅ping, noun | 1. | to strike, esp. with a quick, smart, or light blow: He rapped the door with his cane. |
| 2. | to utter sharply or vigorously: to rap out a command. |
| 3. | (of a spirit summoned by a medium) to communicate (a message) by raps (often fol. by out). |
| 4. | Slang. to criticize sharply: Critics could hardly wait to rap the play. |
| 5. | Slang. to arrest, detain, or sentence for a crime. |
| 6. | Metallurgy. to jar (a pattern) loose from a sand mold. |
| 7. | to knock smartly or lightly, esp. so as to make a noise: to rap on a door. |
| 8. | Slang. to talk or discuss, esp. freely, openly, or volubly; chat. |
| 9. | Slang. to talk rhythmically to the beat of rap music. |
| 10. | a quick, smart, or light blow: a rap on the knuckles with a ruler. |
| 11. | the sound produced by such a blow: They heard a loud rap at the door. |
| 12. | Slang. blame or punishment, esp. for a crime. |
| 13. | Slang. a criminal charge: a murder rap. |
| 14. | Slang. response, reception, or judgment: The product has been getting a very bad rap. |
| 15. | Slang.
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| 16. | rap music. |
| 17. | beat the rap, Slang. to succeed in evading the penalty for a crime; be acquitted: The defendant calmly insisted that he would beat the rap. |
| 18. | take the rap, Slang. to take the blame and punishment for a crime committed by another: He took the rap for the burglary. |
[rap] | 1. | the least bit: I don't care a rap. |
| 2. | a counterfeit halfpenny formerly passed in Ireland. |
[rap] | 1. | to carry off; transport. |
| 2. | to transport with rapture. |
| 3. | to seize for oneself; snatch. |
| a style of popular music, developed by disc jockeys and urban blacks in the late 1970s, in which an insistent, recurring beat pattern provides the background and counterpoint for rapid, slangy, and often boastful rhyming patter glibly intoned by a vocalist or vocalists. |
| rap 1 (rāp) v. rapped, rap·ping, raps v. tr.
To strike a quick light blow: rapped on the door. n.
[Middle English rappen, possibly of imitative origin.] |
| rap 2 (rāp) tr.v. rapt or rapped (rāpt), rap·ping, raps Archaic
[Back-formation from rapt.] |
| rap 3 (rāp) n. Informal The least bit: I don't give a rap about office politics. I don't care a rap what you do. [From obsolete rap, 18th-century Irish counterfeit halfpenny, from Irish Gaelic, alteration (possibly influenced by rap, piece, bit) of ropaire, cutthroat; see rapparee.] |
| rap 4 (rāp) n.
[Possibly from rap1.] Our Living Language : The culture of hip-hop has been the source of dozens of words and expressions in American English, of which rap is one of the most familiar. The word is probably a development ultimately of rap meaning "to hit." It shows up in the early 1900s in the extended meaning "to express orally," as used by so notable a figure as Winston Churchill in 1933. Over the next few decades it came to mean "to discuss or debate informally," a meaning that was well established in the African-American community by the late 1960s. A decade later the word was applied to an evolving style of music characterized by, among other things, beat-driven rhymes of an often improvisatory nature. The slang that is integral to the lyrics of rap continues to be a source of borrowings into colloquial American English; recent examples include chill, meaning "to calm down," and dis, meaning "to show disrespect to." These are but the latest examples in a long series of such borrowings from Black English stretching back a century or more, many of them directly from popular music lyrics or from musicians' lingo. |
rap
In addition to the idiom beginning with rap, also see beat the rap; bum rap; not give a damn (rap); take the rap.
| RAP recurrent abdominal pain |