Rope

How to spell rope

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rope

What does rope mean?

1. nounA length of strong cord made by twisting together fibres or strands.
2. verbTo catch, fasten, or enclose something using cord.

Rope in a sentence

• noun

  The climbers checked every rope before the descent.

• verb

  The ranchers learned to rope a calf within seconds.

• noun

  He coiled the rope neatly on the deck of the boat.

• verb

  Staff will rope off the wet floor until it dries.

Where does rope come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Rope is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English rap, which already meant a stout cord of twisted fibres. That word traces back to a shared Germanic ancestor, seen in the Dutch reep and the German Reif, all describing a band, hoop, or length of twisted material. The familiar modern spelling with a final silent letter and the long vowel grew out of the medieval shift in English pronunciation, when the older 'rap' form lengthened and softened into 'rope'. The same root survives hidden inside the everyday word 'stirrup', which began life as 'stigrap', literally a climbing rope used to mount a horse. Because the word is so old and so plainly spelled, it carries no real trap, just four letters that have stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• rope (single root from Old English rap, a strong cord)