Rise

How to spell rise

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rise

What does rise mean?

1. verbTo move upward, get up, or increase in level, amount, or intensity.
2. nounAn increase in amount, level, or position, including an increase in pay.

Rise in a sentence

• verb

  Hot air will rise toward the ceiling of the room.

• noun

  The staff were promised a pay rise at the end of the year.

• verb

  Prices tend to rise sharply just before the holidays.

• noun

  A steady rise in demand pushed the factory to expand.

Where does rise come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English verb risan, meaning to go up, to ascend, or to get out of bed, and it belongs to the native Germanic core of English rather than to any later borrowing. It shares an ancestor with Old Norse risa and with the German reisen, and the same root sits behind the related forms 'raise' and 'rear'. As a strong verb it carries its old vowel changes through 'rose' and 'risen', which is why the past tense looks so different from the base form. Over the centuries the literal sense of physical ascent broadened to cover increases in number, price, status, and even emotion, so a person can rise from bed, a river can rise after rain, and prices can rise without warning. The spelling trap is mild but real: the single -s- is pronounced like a -z-, which tempts some writers toward a double letter or a -z-, and the silent final -e is easy to drop.

How the word is built

• rise (from Old English risan: to go up, ascend); a strong verb keeping its single -s- and silent final -e