Rein

How to spell rein

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rein

What does rein mean?

1. nounA long strap attached to a horse's bridle, used by the rider to guide and control the animal.
2. verbTo check, restrain, or bring something under control, as if pulling on a horse's strap.

Rein in a sentence

• noun

  The rider pulled hard on the left rein to steer the horse around the jump.

• verb

  Managers were told to rein in departmental spending before the budget review.

• noun

  A loose rein let the pony lower its head and graze along the path.

• verb

  The coach struggled to rein in the team's reckless attacking play.

Where does rein come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Old French resne or rene, meaning the strap used to guide and control a horse, which descended from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin form retina, built on the Latin verb retinere, 'to hold back' or 'restrain'. That verb joins re- 'back' with tenere 'to hold', so the literal idea was always a thing you hold back with. English took the word in during the 1200s, first for the leather strap itself and soon afterward for the figurative sense of checking or controlling something, as in 'rein in'. The same retinere root sits inside the everyday words 'retain' and 'retention', which is a useful memory hook: a rein is what you use to retain control. Its spelling collides with two homophones, 'rain' the weather and 'reign' the rule of a monarch, and the common phrase 'free rein' (giving a horse a loose strap) is frequently and wrongly written as 'free reign'.

How the word is built

• rein (from Old French resne: a strap to control a horse), a single root with no affixes

Words that sound like rein

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

• rain: Water that falls from clouds in drops.
• reign: The period during which a monarch or supreme ruler holds power.