Rye

How to spell rye

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rye

What does rye mean?

1. nounA hardy cereal grain used to make bread, crispbread, and certain whiskies.

Rye in a sentence

• The farmer rotated his fields between wheat and rye each season.

• She ordered a pastrami sandwich on dark rye bread.

Where does rye come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Rye comes from the Old English word ryge, the name of a hardy cereal grass long cultivated across northern Europe. It belongs to the Germanic family of languages, with close relatives in Old Norse rugr and modern German Roggen, all tracing back to a common ancestor that simply named this cold-tolerant grain. Because rye thrives in poor soil and harsh climates, it became a staple bread grain in Scandinavia, Germany, and Russia long before it gave its name to rye whiskey distilled from the same crop. The spelling settled with a silent, decorative -e that turns the short word into a single long vowel, and it is a perfect homophone of wry, the adjective for a twisted or ironic expression, which is the main spelling trap to keep in mind.

How the word is built

• rye (single root, from Old English ryge: the cereal grain)