ale
/eɪl/noun
ale is spelled A-L-E: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 4.8 times per million words in written English, the 11,541st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, ale means “A beer or beerlike drink produced by so-called warm fermentation and unpressurized” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of ale is ales.
How many letters and syllables are in ale?
| Letters | 3: A-L-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.8 times per million words; the 11,541st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Rhymes with | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is ale?
Ale appears 4.8 times per million words in written English, the 11,541st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce ale?
- US /eɪl/
Ale 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: En-us-ale.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with ale
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with ale?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as ale from its last stressed vowel (/eɪl/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: lea, ael.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of ale
- ales plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does ale mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A beer or beerlike drink produced by so-called warm fermentation and unpressurized.
- 2
datedA beer or beerlike drink made without hops.
- 3
UKobsoleteA rural festival where ale is drunk.
noun
- 1
Initialism of atomic layer etching.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Ale in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense beer produced by warm fermentation:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | bière anglaise, ale |
| German | Ale |
| Portuguese | cerveja inglesa |
| Spanish | cerveza inglesa, ale, cerveza ale |
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 ale come from?
From Middle English ale, from Old English ealu, ealo, from Proto-West Germanic *alu, from Proto-Germanic *alu (compare Dutch aal, Icelandic and Swedish öl (“beer”), Danish, Faroese, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk øl (“beer”)), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂elut- (“beer”), or *h₂elu- (“bitter”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).