Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A Romani man.
- noun A cereal grass (Secale cereale) of cool climates, widely cultivated for its grain.
- noun The grain of this plant, ground into flour or used in making whiskey and for livestock feed.
- noun Rye bread.
- noun Whiskey made from the grains of this plant.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The cereal plant Sccale cerealc, or its seeds.
- noun In heraldry, a bearing representing a stalk of grain with the ear bending downward, thus distinguished from wheat, in which the ear is erect.
- noun Whisky made from rye. [Colloq., U. S.]
- noun A disease in hawks which causes the head to swell.
- noun A gentleman; a superior person: as, a Rommany rye.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A grain yielded by a hardy cereal grass (
Secale cereale ), closely allied to wheat; also, the plant itself. Rye constitutes a large portion of the breadstuff used by man. - noun A disease in a hawk.
- noun (Bot.) See under
Grass . See alsoRay grass , andDarnel . - noun (Bot.) any plant of the genus Elymus, tall grasses with much the appearance of rye.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Caraway (from the mistakenassumption that thewhole seeds, often used to season rye bread, are the rye itself) - noun
Ryegrass , any of the species ofLolium .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun whiskey distilled from rye or rye and malt
- noun hardy annual cereal grass widely cultivated in northern Europe where its grain is the chief ingredient of black bread and in North America for forage and soil improvement
- noun the seed of the cereal grass
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Romani rai, from Sanskrit rājā, king; see raja.]
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English, from Old English ryge.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Old English ryġe, from Proto-Germanic *rugiz. Cognates include Germanic Old Norse rugr (Danish rug, Swedish råg), German Roggen and from non-Germanic Indo-European Russian рожь (rož') and Old Prussian rugis.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word rye.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.