Rains

How to spell rains

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rains

What does rains mean?

1. verbTo fall as water from the clouds (used of the weather, third person).
2. nounPeriods of heavy or seasonal rainfall, especially in tropical climates.

Rains in a sentence

• verb

  In this valley it rains almost every afternoon during summer.

• noun

  The farmers plant their crops just before the spring rains arrive.

• verb

  The forecast says it rains steadily along the coast all weekend.

• noun

  The monsoon rains filled every reservoir across the region.

Where does rains come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English noun 'regn' and its related verb 'rignan', both meaning the water that falls from the sky, and it has close cousins across the Germanic languages such as the Dutch 'regen' and the German 'Regen'. The spelling settled on 'rain' after the harder Old English 'g' sound softened and eventually disappeared from pronunciation, leaving the vowel cluster we keep today. The plural noun sense, as in 'the seasonal rains', and the verb sense, as in 'it rains', simply add the everyday '-s' ending. The real spelling trap is not the word itself but its sound-alikes: 'reins' (the straps used to steer a horse) and 'reigns' (the rule of a monarch), which look quite different on the page despite sounding identical. Keeping the plain 'ai' of 'rain' in mind separates it cleanly from those royal and equestrian relatives.

How the word is built

• rain (water falling from clouds)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb suffix)

Words that sound like rains

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

• reins: The long straps attached to a bridle, used to guide or check a horse.