Basic+ Word of the Day: reply

reply (verb, noun) past tense: replied

I am replying to your letter.

If you reply to someone, it means that you give them an answer.

• She replied to my question.

To send someone a message after they have sent you a message is also to reply.

• Sorry, I forgot to reply to your text message.

A reply is a message that you send after getting a message from someone else.

• I sent him an email but I didn't get a reply.

Common uses

When we call someone but they don’t answer the phone, we sometimes say that there is no reply. For example: “I phoned him yesterday but there was no reply.”

In pop culture

When an email is sent to many people and you reply to all of them, you hit reply all. Sometimes bad things happen if someone hits reply all in error. Here is a funny commercial about when one person does this.

There are other meanings of reply.