Word.ws English Dictionary

ripost

ripost noun: a thrust given in return after parrying a lunge.

Noun

ripost (plural riposts)

  1. A thrust given in return after parrying a lunge.
  2. A quick and usually witty response to a taunt.
  3. An answer or reply, rapidly uttered, in response to a question or problem.
    • The French government was always apprehensive to the German Government’s ripost to an air offensive.1952, Thomas Allnut Brassey, Brasseys Annual: The Armed Forces Year-book, page 306
    • Written as a ripost to Samuel Constant’s short story Le Mari sentimental, in which the husband is driven to despair and ultimately suicide by his carping wife, Mistress Henly begins with an account of the wife’s reading of the Constant story and how as a reader she links the text of imagination to...2005, Suellen Diaconoff, Through The Reading Glass, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 110

Forms of ripost

pluralriposts
alternative formriposte

Origin of ripost

From French riposte, taken from Italian risposta, a derivative of the verb rispondere (“to respond”).

Questions about ripost

What does ripost mean?
Ripost means a thrust given in return after parrying a lunge.
What part of speech is ripost?
Ripost is a noun.
What is the plural of ripost?
The plural of ripost is riposts.

Words near ripost in the dictionary

  1. Ripon Falls
  2. ripons
  3. ripoprobe
  4. ripoptosome
  5. ripoptosomes
  6. ripost
  7. riposte
  8. riposted
  9. ripostes
  10. riposting
  11. riposts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ripost (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ripost.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ripost. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.