reaper

Grim Reaper

Death, as personified by a cloaked man or skeleton carrying a scythe. She's been in three really terrible car accidents but has miraculously avoided the Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper comes for everyone eventually—no one gets out alive. How long do you think you can outrun the Grim Reaper on this motorcycle of yours?

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Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

grim reaper

Fig. death. I think I have a few years to go yet before the grim reaper pays me a call.

See also: grim, reaper

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

the Grim Reaper

The Grim Reaper is an imaginary character who represents death. He looks like a skeleton, wears a long, black cloak with a hood, and carries a scythe (= tool for cutting grass). By giving away assets while still alive, inheritance tax can be avoided entirely by the time the Grim Reaper calls. They were sitting around, waiting for the Grim Reaper.

See also: grim, reaper

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

the Grim Reaper

a personification of death in the form of a cloaked skeleton wielding a large scythe.

See also: grim, reaper

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

grim reaper, the

Death. This expression is actually a combination of the older grim death, which dates from about 1600, and the artistic depiction of death with a scythe, which began somewhat later. The first appeared in a play by Philip Massinger (1583–1640), The Roman Actor, and also in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (“Before mine eyes in opposition sits Grim Death, my son and foe”). The second appeared in a song from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” and in Longfellow’s poem, “The Reaper and the Flowers” (“There is a Reaper whose name is Death, and, with his sickle keen”), as well as in earlier but more obscure sources.

See also: grim

The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer