Rode

How to spell rode

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rode

What does rode mean?

1. verbThe past tense of 'ride': sat on and controlled, or travelled in, a moving animal or vehicle.

Rode in a sentence

• She rode her bicycle to the office every morning last summer.

• They rode the early train into the city for the conference.

Where does rode come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'ride', which comes from the Old English rīdan, meaning 'to sit on and control a moving animal or vehicle'. Like many of the oldest English verbs, it is a strong verb: instead of adding an ending, it changes its inner vowel to mark the past, giving the Old English past form rād, which became modern 'rode'. The verb descends from a common Germanic root shared with Dutch rijden and German reiten, all carrying the sense of travelling on horseback. The same family gave English the nouns 'road' (originally a journey made by riding) and 'raid', which is why 'rode' and 'road' ended up sounding identical while meaning very different things. That shared ancestry is the real reason the spelling trap exists: 'rode' is always the action of riding, while 'road' is the surface you travel on.

How the word is built

• rode = past tense of the verb 'ride' (Old English rīdan), formed by an internal vowel change (ablaut) rather than an -ed ending

Words that sound like rode

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

• road: A wide prepared track or surface for vehicles and people to travel along between places.