rind

/ɹaɪnd/noun, verb

rind is a noun meaning “Tree bark” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-I-N-D and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rind is rinds.

What does rind mean?

noun

1
Tree bark.
2
A hard, tough outer layer, particularly on food such as fruit, cheese, etc.
cheese rind; lemon rind; lime rind
3
rareThe gall, the crust, the insolence; often as "the immortal rind"
Taking the money from a man when he's got his pants down. What are you, a doctor or a tailor's tout? Thirty bucks! If I figured you'd have the rind to touch me that much I'd have lashed them up with a pair of braces!
4
An iron support fitting used on the upper millstone of a grist mill.

verb

1
To remove the rind from.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce rind?

/ɹaɪnd/

Rind has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-rind.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rind

rinds plural, present, singular, he/she/it
rinding participle, present
rinded participle, past
rynd
rine

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is rind?

Rind appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 38,863rd most frequent word form in the list.

rind0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Rind in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
Spanish	corteza (tree bark), cáscara (hard outer layer of fruit, cheese)
French	pelure, croûte, couenne (hard outer layer of fruit, cheese)
German	Rinde, Schwarte (hard outer layer of fruit, cheese)
Portuguese	casca (hard outer layer of fruit, cheese)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does rind come from?

From Middle English rind, rinde, from Old English rind and rinde (“treebark, crust”), from Proto-West Germanic *rindā, from Proto-Germanic *rindō, *rindǭ (“crust, rind”), from Proto-Indo-European *rem- (“to come to rest, support or prop oneself”). Cognate with German Rinde (“bark, rind”). Related to English rand.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).