Race

How to spell race

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce race

What does race mean?

1. nounA competition to determine who is fastest over a set distance or course.
2. verbTo move or compete at high speed.
3. nounA major grouping of people sharing common descent or physical characteristics.

Race in a sentence

• noun

  The cycling race finished with a sprint to the line.

• verb

  She had to race to the station to catch the early train.

• noun

  The survey asked respondents about their age, gender, and race.

• noun

  Thousands of runners entered the charity race through the city.

• verb

  The children love to race each other across the garden.

• noun

  The charter forbids discrimination on the grounds of race or religion.

Where does race come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The competition sense of race comes from the Old Norse word rás, meaning 'a running' or 'a swift rush of water', which entered northern English dialects through Scandinavian settlement and was firmly established by the 1300s. Its earliest English uses described a fast current or a channel of moving water, a meaning that survives today in 'mill race', and only later did it settle into the familiar idea of a contest of speed. The quite separate sense of race meaning a group of people or breeding stock arrived much later, in the 1500s, borrowed from French race and Italian razza, terms of debated and uncertain origin. Because two unrelated histories collapsed into one short spelling, the modern word covers both running fast and human ancestry. The simple spelling rarely troubles writers, since the silent magic 'e' lengthening the vowel follows a completely regular English pattern.

How the word is built

• race (whole word, from Old Norse rás 'a running, rush of water'); no prefix or suffix