Why do movie people say “Its a wrap”?. I have heard a theory that it should be “Its a R.A.P.” meaning “Rewind and Print” but dont know if there is any truth in this. Any ideas?
“Wrap” didn’t come into common parlance until the 1970s. Before then, it was generally “Wind-up.”
I don’t know if R.A.P. is a post hoc explanation or not, but I suspect it is. “Wrap” and “Wind-up” both connote a final action in their general senses.
“Wrap it up” is a common expression for finishing a task. Going from “That wraps it up” to “It’s a wrap” strikes me as much more plausible than the RAP notion.
The earliest proven cite for “That’s a wrap” in the movie sense is 1957.
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0502D&L=ADS-L&P=R12410&I=-3
There’s a good presentation of where the term may or may not have originated. The author, Ben Zimmer, is one of the best authorities on word/phrase origins.
prustage writes:
> I have heard a theory that it should be “Its a R.A.P.” meaning “Rewind and
> Print” but dont know if there is any truth in this.
Etymologies that claim that something came from an acronym are nearly always wrong. They are almost certainly wrong if they claim that the acronym originated before 1910. There’s only a couple examples of acronyms before then, and they’re special cases. Even those etymologies claiming to be from acronyms that are more recent are wrong the vast majority of the time.
Many thanks for that - and particularly for the interesting link. Wow, now I have a whole new repository of information to explore!
The answer is quite simple.
Movies involve lots and lots of cables. There are whole job descriptions that involve nothing but dealing with the masses of cables.
At the end of the shoot, you wrap the cables- which is actually a bit of a skill.