roe
/ˈɹoʊ/noun
roe is spelled R-O-E: 3 letters and one syllable. It appears 2.8 times per million words in written English, the 16,228th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “roe vs row” about 10 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, roe means “Eggs of fish” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of roe is roes.
How many letters and syllables are in roe?
| Letters | 3: R-O-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 2.8 times per million words; the 16,228th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| 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 roe?
Roe appears 2.8 times per million words in written English, the 16,228th 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 roe?
- UK /ˈɹəʊ/
- US /ˈɹoʊ/
Roe 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-roe.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with roe
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: Rowe, Wroe, rho, row (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with roe?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as roe from its last stressed vowel (/oʊ/):
Spelled with the same letters in another order: ore, reo, eor.
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 roe
- roes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does roe mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Eggs of fish.
- 2
Sperm of certain fish.
- 3
Ovaries of certain crustaceans.
- 4
Ellipsis of roe deer.
- 5
A mottled appearance of light and shade in wood, especially in mahogany.
noun
- 1
Initialism of return on equity, a measure of how well a company used reinvested earnings to generate additional earnings.
- 2
Initialism of rule(s) of engagement, a/the rule(s) governing when to fire or return fire.
- 3
Abbreviation of record of employment.
noun
- 1
An individual of the orclike Roegadyn race.
noun
- 1
Alternative form of ROE.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Roe in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense eggs of fish:
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 roe come from?
From Middle English rowe, rowne, roun, rawne, from Old English *hrogn (“spawn, fish eggs, roe”), from Proto-Germanic *hrugnaz, *hrugną (“spawn, roe”), from Proto-Indo-European *krek- (“(frog) spawn”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).