Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A word, sound, or phrase that is repeated; a refrain.
- noun Mathematics The digit or group of digits that repeats infinitely in a repeating decimal.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In arithmetic, that part of a repeating decimal which recurs continually; the circulate.
- noun Something which is or has to be repeated, as the burden of a song.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Math.) That part of a circulating decimal which recurs continually,
ad infinitum : -- sometimes indicated by a dot over the first and last figures; thus, in the circulating decimal .728328328 + (otherwise .7�8�), therepetend is 283.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
refrain (having repeated words, sounds or phrases) - noun mathematics A
repeating decimal
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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He has easily recognizable devices: the dominant note, the refrain, the "repetend," that is to say the phrase which echoes, with some variation, a phrase or line already used.
The American Spirit in Literature : a chronicle of great interpreters Bliss Perry 1907
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True, America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend--a repeating decimal.
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen Divers 2007
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True, America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend--a repeating decimal.
Archive 2007-11-01 Divers 2007
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A musical or mnemonic device akin to the refrain was that sing-song species of repetend so familiar in ballad language:
A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century 1886
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"Sister Helen" is a ballad in dialogue with a subtly varying repetend, and introduces the popular belief that a witch could kill a man slowly by melting a wax figure.
A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century 1886
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Artifice and ballad preciosity have been cultivated more sedulously in the south, with a learned use of the repetend, archaism of style, and imitation of the quaint mediaeval habit of mind.
A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century 1886
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America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend -- a repeating decimal.
The Trimmed Lamp, and other Stories of the Four Million O. Henry 1886
mollusque commented on the word repetend
A repeated or recurrent sound, cadence, word or phrase; refrain.
November 25, 2007