Rapped

rap ¹  (rp)

v. rapped, rap·ping, raps

v.tr.

1. To hit sharply and swiftly; strike: rapped the table with his fist.

2. To utter sharply: rap out a complaint.

3. To criticize or blame.

v.intr.

To strike a quick light blow: rapped on the door.

n.

1. A quick light blow or knock.

2. A knocking or tapping sound.

3. Slang

a. A reprimand.

b. A sentence to serve time in prison.

4. Slang A negative quality or characteristic associated with a person or an object.

Idioms:

beat the rap Slang

To escape punishment or be acquitted of a charge.

take the rap Slang

To accept punishment or take the blame for an offense or error.

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[Middle English rappen, possibly of imitative origin.]

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rap ²  (rp)

tr.v. rapt or rapped (rpt), rap·ping, raps Archaic

1. past participle rapt To enchant or seize with rapture.

2. To snatch.

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[Back-formation from rapt.]

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rap ³  (rp)

n. Informal

The least bit: I don't give a rap about office politics. I don't care a rap what you do.

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[From obsolete rap, 18th-century Irish counterfeit halfpenny, from Irish Gaelic, alteration (possibly influenced by rap, piece, bit) of ropaire, cutthroat; see rapparee.]

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rap ⁴  (rp)

n.

1. Slang A talk, conversation, or discussion.

2.

a. A form of popular music developed especially in African-American urban communities and characterized by spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a strong rhythmic accompaniment.

b. A composition or performance of such music.

intr.v. rapped, rap·ping, raps

1. Slang To discuss freely and at length.

2. To perform rap music.

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[Possibly from rap.]

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.