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リプ ripu
A reply — the whole social currency.
What does ripu mean?
Clipped from reply. Sending one is リプする, answering the ones you got is リプ返, and the pile under a popular post is the リプ欄. Fandom lives in there.
Example
リプ返せてなくてごめん。
Sorry I haven't gotten back to your replies.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
The story behind ripu
Japanese loanwords get cut to two or three beats almost automatically, and reply lost its tail on arrival. Before it, message boards used レス, from response, which still survives in older corners of the internet; リプ came in with Twitter in the late 2000s and became the default word for public conversation.
What is worth noticing is how much social weight it carries. Replying is a form of care, so リプ返 is treated as a small obligation, and apologising for a slow one is normal politeness. There is even エアリプ, the reply aimed at someone without tagging them, which is where a lot of quiet drama happens.
Get ripu in your pocket
リプ is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
