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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

rye.

A grain used extensively in Europe for making bread, beer, and (now generally) for animal fodder.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɹaɪ/
  1. A grain used extensively in Europe for making bread, beer, and (now generally) for animal fodder.

    countable · uncountable
    They bought a sack of rye and a sack of wheat with the intent to try their hand at milling and baking.
  2. The grass Secale cereale from which the grain is obtained.

    countable · uncountable
    This field will be planted to rye next spring.
  3. Ellipsis of rye bread.

    abbreviation · alt-of · countable · ellipsis · uncountable
    Customer: A tuna sandwich, please. Waiter: Sure, hon. You want that on white, wheat, or rye?
  4. Ellipsis of rye whiskey, whiskey made mainly or wholly from rye grain.

    Canada · US · abbreviation · alt-of · countable · ellipsis · uncountable
    He likes any whiskey, but his favorite is rye.
  5. A drink (serving) of rye whiskey.

    Canada · US · countable
    I'll have a rye, neat, please.
  6. Caraway (from the mistaken assumption that the whole seeds, often used to season rye bread, are the rye itself)

    broadly · countable · proscribed · sometimes · uncountable
  7. Ryegrass, any of the species of Lolium.

    broadly · countable · proscribed · sometimes · uncountable
  8. A disease of hawks.

    countable · uncountable
  9. A young man.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle English rye, rie, from Old English ryġe, from Proto-West Germanic *rugi, from Proto-Germanic *rugiz. Germanic cognates include Dutch and West Frisian rogge, Low German Rogg, German Roggen, Rocken, Old Norse rugr (Danish rug, Swedish råg); non-Germanic cognates include Russian рожь (rožʹ) and Latvian rudzi.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.