reprise means A recurrence or resumption of an action. It carries an Arena rating of 1717, earned across 17 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, reprise ranks #796 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #993 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,170 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #3,411 of 42,747 for Qualifying.
reprise is pronounced /ɹɪˈpɹiːz/.
Why “reprise” is a great word
A deliberate return or resumption, especially of a distinct musical passage or thematic action. From Middle English reprise (noun) and reprisen (verb), from Old French reprise ('a taking back'), from reprendre ('to take back, resume'), from Latin reprehendere ('to seize, blame'). Unlike 'repetition,' which suggests a mechanical echo, or 'renewal,' which promises fresh vigor, a reprise is a knowing and often transformed recurrence. It is the orchestra taking up the opening theme as the curtain falls; the scent of woodsmoke returning on an autumn breeze exactly as it did in childhood; the same argument, with the same hurt, visited upon a different generation—a quiet admission that some patterns are not merely repeated but inhabited, bearing the full weight of what has intervened.
Etymology
From Middle English reprise (noun) and reprisen (verb), from Old French reprise, from reprendre. In some senses borrowed anew from Modern French reprise.
noun
- A recurrence or resumption of an action.
- A repetition of a phrase, a return to an earlier theme, or a second rendition or version of a song in a programme or musical.
- A renewal of a failed attack, after going back into the en garde position.
- A taking by way of retaliation.e.g.“Your care about your banks infers a fear
Of threatening floods ,and inundations near;
If so, a just reprise would only be
Of what the land usurped upon the sea” — 1687, [John Dryden], “(please specify the page number)”, in The Hind and the Panther. A Poem, in Three Parts, 2nd edition, London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC:
- Deductions and duties paid yearly out of a manor and lands, as rent charge, pensions, annuities, etc.; also spelled reprizes.
- A ship recaptured from an enemy or from a pirate.
- In masonry, the return of a moulding in an internal angle.
verb
- To take (something) up or on again.e.g.“How to take life from that dead-liuing swaine, / Whom still he marked freshly to arize / From th'earth, & from her wombe new spirits to reprize.” — 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- To repeat or resume an action or a role.e.g.“The aging actress played the role she played in her youth, as if to reprise it.”
- To recompense; to pay.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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