reprieve
/ɹɪˈpɹiːv/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.88 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Company […] may reprieve a man from his melancholy, yet it cannot secure him from his conscience."
- "At the time of writing the halts have been reprieved due to doubts as to the legality of the withdrawal of services. It is feared that this reprieve may not outlast the summer timetable which, on the section in question, provides only a skeleton of the former service."
- "The prisoner was saved from execution; the governor had requested a reprieve."
- "I have photographed destroyed homes, hospitals, funerals, humanitarian aid, empty markets and the daily lives of people returning to their neighborhoods during moment of reprieve."
- "Yet it was not easy, on the balance of play, to be convinced by Pellegrini and his defeated players that the reprieve might somehow be a defining moment over the two legs."
- "And it said there was no reprieve for 435 stations already approved for closure before the report appeared."
Etymology
First use appears c. 1513 in the writings of Robert Fabyan. In the sense of “to take back to prison”, from Middle English repryen (“to remand, detain”) (1494), possibly from Middle French repris, in the form of reprendre (“take back”); a cognate to reprise. The sense has become generalized, but does retain connotations of punishment and execution. The noun's first use appears c. 1592.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *gʰed-, repryen, repris