Rap

How to spell rap

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rap

What does rap mean?

1. verbTo strike something with a quick, sharp blow, often to make a knocking sound.
2. nounA style of popular music in which words are spoken or chanted rhythmically over a beat.
3. nounBlame or punishment, especially when taken on behalf of someone else (informal).

Rap in a sentence

• verb

  The inspector will rap on the door before entering the flat.

• noun

  The festival lineup featured both jazz and rap on the main stage.

• noun

  He refused to take the rap for a mistake his manager had made.

• verb

  She watched the teacher rap a ruler against the desk for attention.

• noun

  She writes her own rap lyrics during the train commute.

• noun

  The junior clerk took the rap to protect the whole team.

Where does rap come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Rap is an old English word first recorded in the 1300s, and it almost certainly began as an imitative or echoic word, meaning its sound mimics the thing it describes: the short, sharp noise of a quick knock. Similar clattering words exist in the Scandinavian languages, such as Swedish rapp meaning a stroke or blow, which suggests a shared northern European instinct for naming sounds this way. For centuries the word stayed close to that physical sense of striking something briskly, as in rapping on a door. In the twentieth century it gained the slang sense of talking, especially talking freely or rhythmically, and from that came the musical genre of rap in the 1970s, where lyrics are chanted in time to a beat. The expression to take the rap, meaning to accept blame or punishment, grew from the same idea of a blow being dealt out. Throughout its history the spelling has stayed simple, which is precisely why writers so often confuse it with its silent-w homophone wrap.

How the word is built

• rap (single root, likely imitative of a sharp knocking sound)

Words that sound like rap

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• wrap: To cover or enclose something by folding material around it.