rime
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "rime", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "rime" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "rime" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
rime is aEnglishnoun. It means: Archaic in the form rimes: originally, any frozen dew forming a white deposit on exposed surfaces; hoar frost (sense 1). Pronounced /ɹaɪm/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | rime |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ɹaɪm/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #53,217 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for rime is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɹaɪm/. Corpus data places it at rank #53,217 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for rime in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: The noun is derived from Middle English rim, rime, rym, ryme (“hoar frost; rime”), from Old English hrīm (“frost”), from Proto-West Germanic *hrīm (“rime; hoar frost”), from Proto-Germanic *hrīmą (North Germanic), *hrīmaz, *hrīmô (“rime; hoar frost”), proba… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is rime, spelled R-I-M-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Archaic in the form rimes: originally, any frozen dew forming a white deposit on exposed surfaces; hoar frost (sense 1).
- 2A film or slimy coating.
- 3White hair as an indication of old age.
- 4Ice formed by the rapid freezing of cold water droplets of fog on to a cold surface.
- 5A coating or sheet of ice so formed.
- 6A cold fog or mist.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English rim, rime, rym, ryme (“hoar frost; rime”), from Old English hrīm (“frost”), from Proto-West Germanic *hrīm (“rime; hoar frost”), from Proto-Germanic *hrīmą (North Germanic), *hrīmaz, *hrīmô (“rime; hoar frost”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *krey- (“to graze, touch; to streak”). The verb is derived from the noun. (The Old English equivalent, which did not survive into modern English, was behrīman.) Cognates * Middle Dutch riim, rijm, rīm (modern Dutch rijm (“hoar frost”)) * Old Danish *rim (only in rimfrost (“rime frost”); modern Danish rim (“hoar frost”)) * Old French rime, rimee (Middle French rime, rimee (“hoar frost”), Anglo-Norman rime, rimee (“hoar frost”)) * Old High German rīm (Middle High German rīm, Bavarian Reim (“dew; fog; light frost”) (dialectal)) * Old Norse hrím (Icelandic hrím, Norwegian rim (“hoar frost”)) * Old Saxon hrīm * Old Swedish *riim, *rim (only in rimfrost (“rime frost”); modern Swedish rim) * West Frisian rime, rym
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #53,217 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter R in our English index: