repeat

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French repeter, from Latin repetō, repetere, from the prefix re- (“again”) + peto (“attack, beseech”).

Pronunciation

• (verb) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈpiːt/
• (noun) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˈpiːt/, /ˈɹiːpiːt/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːt

Verb

repeat (third-person singular simple present repeats, present participle repeating, simple past and past participle repeated)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To do or say again (and again).

   The scientists repeated the experiment in order to confirm the result.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 5, in The Celebrity:

     When this conversation was repeated in detail within the hearing of the young woman in question, and undoubtedly for his benefit, Mr. Trevor threw shame to the winds and scandalized the Misses Brewster then and there by proclaiming his father to have been a country storekeeper.

2. (transitive) To echo the words of (a person).
   • 2008, Ken Jensen, Ronda Del Boccio, It Takes Guts to Be Me: How an Ex-marine Beat Bipolar Disorder

     Their rationale with repeating me was that the prior program had not been of sufficient quality to teach me the error of my ways.

3. (obsolete) To make trial of again; to undergo or encounter again.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Waller to this entry?)

4. (law, Scotland) To repay or refund (an excess received).
5. (procedure word, military) To call in a previous artillery fire mission with the same ammunition and method either on the coordinates or adjusted either because destruction of the target was insufficient or missed.

   Add 100, left 50. Repeat, over.

   Use "say again" instead of repeat on the radio. Repeat will bring in artillery fire.

Noun

repeat (plural repeats)

1. An iteration; a repetition.

   We gave up after the third repeat because it got boring.

2. A television program shown after its initial presentation; a rerun.
3. Patterns of nucleic acids that occur in multiple copies throughout the genome.

See also

• redundant

Anagrams

• Partee, Perate, retape