Roe

How to spell roe

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce roe

What does roe mean?

1. nounThe mass of eggs contained in the body of a female fish, often eaten as food.
2. nounA small Eurasian deer noted for its reddish-brown coat and short antlers.

Roe in a sentence

• The chef served smoked salmon with a spoonful of bright orange roe.

• A startled roe bounded across the woodland path at dawn.

• Herring roe is salted and packed for export.

• The estate manages a healthy population of roe in the forest.

Where does roe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Roe in the sense of fish eggs comes from the Middle English 'rowe' or 'rough', which descends from a Germanic source related to Old Norse 'hrogn' and Old High German 'rogo', all meaning the mass of eggs inside a fish. The earlier forms carried an extra consonant that English gradually wore away, leaving the plain three-letter spelling we use today. The quite separate animal sense, the small European roe deer, comes from Old English 'ra' or 'raha', a native Germanic word for that species, with relatives in Old Norse and Old High German. Both senses settled on the same modern spelling, which is why the word now looks identical despite the two unrelated origins. Because it sounds exactly like 'row' and the Greek letter 'rho', the spelling is a frequent trap when writers reach for the wrong homophone.

How the word is built

• roe (single root noun, from Old English/Germanic; no prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like roe

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

• row: A number of people or things positioned in a straight line.