Reps

How to spell reps

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce reps

What does reps mean?

1. nounThe repeated cycles of a single exercise performed in a workout.
2. nounInformal term for representatives, such as sales staff or union officials who act for others.

Reps in a sentence

• The trainer told him to do twelve reps before resting.

• The company sent two sales reps to the regional trade fair.

• Adding more reps to each set built her strength quickly.

• Union reps met with management to discuss the new shift pattern.

Where does reps come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern informal clipping that takes a longer Latin-derived word and shortens it, then adds the English plural ending. The two main sources are 'repetition', from the Latin repetere meaning 'to do again' (built from re- 'again' and petere 'to seek or aim at'), and 'representative', from the Latin repraesentare meaning 'to bring before, to present again'. The clipped form 'rep' became popular in the twentieth century in two separate worlds: the gym and weight-training scene, where a 'rep' is one cycle of an exercise, and the world of sales and unions, where a 'rep' is the person who acts on behalf of a company or a group. The spelling is phonetically simple, so the only real trap is choosing the plural '-s' over the wrong ending. Because the word is a clipping rather than a formal coinage, it stays lowercase and keeps the plain consonant cluster of the original syllable.

How the word is built

• rep (clipping of repetition or representative)
• -s (plural)