Rose

How to spell rose

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rose

What does rose mean?

1. nounA flowering shrub prized for its fragrant, often thorny blooms.
2. verbThe past tense of rise: moved upward or increased.

Rose in a sentence

• noun

  He planted a climbing rose against the garden wall.

• verb

  The price of fuel rose sharply over the winter.

• noun

  A single red rose lay across the wrapped bouquet.

• verb

  Smoke rose slowly from the chimney into the cold air.

Where does rose come from?

Language of origin: Latin

As the name of the flower, rose comes from the Latin rosa, meaning the bloom we still know today, and Old English borrowed it very early as rose, reinforced later by Old French rose. The Latin word itself was probably taken from a Greek and ultimately an eastern source, which is why its deeper origin is a little hazy. The unrelated verb sense is the past tense of 'rise', a thoroughly native word from Old English risan, meaning to get up, ascend, or move upward. English has long had pairs like this where a noun of Latin descent happens to share its spelling with a strong verb's past form. The spelling stayed simple and stable in both cases, so the only real challenge is remembering which meaning the writer intends.

How the word is built

• rose (from Latin rosa: the flower); the verb is the past tense of 'rise', from Old English risan