Rain

How to spell rain

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rain

What does rain mean?

1. nounWater that falls from clouds in drops.
2. verbTo fall as water from the clouds.

Rain in a sentence

• noun

  The forecast warned of heavy rain across the whole weekend.

• verb

  The dark clouds suggest it will rain before noon.

• noun

  Steady rain flooded the car park within an hour.

• verb

  The forecast says it may rain during the outdoor concert.

Where does rain come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Rain is one of the oldest words in English, descending directly from the Old English noun regn, which simply meant the water that falls from the sky. It belongs to the native Germanic stock of the language and has close cousins across the family, including the Dutch regen and the German Regen, all tracing back to a shared Proto-Germanic form. Unlike many English words, it was never borrowed from Latin or French; it has been spoken in Britain continuously for well over a thousand years. Over time the older spelling regn lost its hard consonant cluster and settled into the smooth modern rain. The chief spelling trap is not the word itself but its two sound-alikes, reign (royal rule) and rein (a strap for a horse), both of which arrived later through French and crowd the same pronunciation.

How the word is built

• rain (from Old English regn: water that falls from the clouds); a single native root with no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like rain

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• reign: The period during which a monarch or supreme ruler holds power.
• rein: A long strap attached to a horse's bridle, used by the rider to guide and control the animal.