rathe
/ɹeɪð/adjective, adverb
rathe is an adjective meaning “Ripening or blooming early” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-A-T-H-E and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does rathe mean?
adjective
- 1
Ripening or blooming early.
adverb
- 1
obsoleteQuickly.
- 2
Early in the morning.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce rathe?
- /ɹeɪð/
Rathe 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-rathe.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of rathe
- rather comparative
- rathest superlative
- rath
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is rathe?
Rathe appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 125,655th 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).
Where does rathe come from?
From Middle English rathe, from Old English hraþe, from Proto-West Germanic *hraþō, *hradō (“quickly”), from *hraþ, *hrad (“quick”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kret- (“quick; to move quickly”). Cognate with German Low German radd, ratt (“rashly; quickly; hastily”), and German gerade (“now, just, exactly”); compare Dutch rad (“quick, swift”), Norwegian rad (“quick, direct”), Gothic 𐍂𐌰𐌸𐌹𐌶𐌰 (raþiza, “easier”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).