ropes
/ɹoʊps/noun, verb
ropes is spelled R-O-P-E-S: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 4.6 times per million words in written English, the 11,870th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, ropes means “Basic skills of a job” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in ropes?
| Letters | 5: R-O-P-E-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.6 times per million words; the 11,870th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| 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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is ropes?
Ropes appears 4.6 times per million words in written English, the 11,870th 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 ropes?
- US /ɹoʊps/
- UK /ɹəʊps/
Ropes 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-ropes.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with ropes?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as ropes (/oʊps/).
Spelled with the same letters in another order: prose, spore, poser, soper, preso.
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).
What does ropes mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
plural of rope
- 2
Basic skills of a job.
show the ropes, learn the ropes
verb
- 1
third-person singular simple present indicative of rope
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Where does ropes come from?
In the sense of skills, a now figurative use that originally referred to literal ropes. The phrase “he knows the ropes” written on a seaman’s discharge meant that he was inexperienced and only familiar with a ship’s principal ropes.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).