Rot

How to spell rot

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rot

What does rot mean?

1. verbTo decay or break down through natural processes of decomposition.
2. nounThe process or result of decay, especially in wood, plants, or organic matter.

Rot in a sentence

• verb

  Damp can make wooden beams rot over time.

• noun

  The surveyor found extensive rot in the roof timbers.

• verb

  If you leave the fruit too long it will rot in the bowl.

• noun

  Dry rot had spread through the old window frames.

Where does rot come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English verb rotian, meaning 'to decay' or 'to putrefy'. It belongs to a wider Germanic family, with close relatives in Dutch rotten and the German dialect word rotten, all tracing back to a common Germanic ancestor for softening and breaking down. The noun sense, meaning the process or product of decay, grew naturally alongside the verb. From the 1840s onward British speakers also adopted 'rot' as a dismissive word for nonsense or rubbish talk, a sense that survives in expressions about talking rot. Because the word is so short and phonetically plain, the only real spelling care is keeping the single 't' rather than doubling it, which writers sometimes do by analogy with rotting.

How the word is built

• rot (from Old English rotian, to decay), a single native root with no prefix or suffix