roe

• (UK) enPR: rō, IPA^(key): /ˈɹəʊ/
• (US) enPR: rō, IPA^(key): /ˈɹoʊ/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -əʊ
• Homophones: row (in some senses only), Roe, Rowe, rho

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”).

Cognate with Dutch roge (“roe”), German Low German Rögen (“roe”), German Rogen (“roe”), Danish rogn, ravn (“roe”), Swedish rom (“roe”), Icelandic hrogn (“roe”), Lithuanian kurkulaĩ (“frog spawn”), Russian кряк (krjak, “frog spawn”).[1]

• roan, rone, roun, rown, rawn, round (dialectal)
• roughne, roughnes (obsolete)

roe (countable and uncountable, plural roes)

1. The eggs of fish.
2. The sperm of certain fish.
3. The ovaries of certain crustaceans.

• 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 40:

  It was quite flavourless, except that, where its innards had been imperfectly removed, silver traces of roe gave it an unpleasant bitterness.

• (sperm): milt

• hard roe
• soft roe
• white roe

• caviar
• egg

From Middle English ro, roa, from Old English rā, rāha, from Proto-West Germanic *raihō, from Proto-Germanic *raihô, *raihą, from *róyko-, from Proto-Indo-European *rey- (“spotted, streaked”).

See also Saterland Frisian Räi, Dutch ree, German Reh; also Irish riabh (“tripe, streak”), Latvian ràibs (“spotted”), Russian рябо́й (rjabój, “mottled fur”).

roe (plural roe or roes)

1. Short for roe deer.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:

     And let his foes like flockes of feareful Roes,
     Purſude by hunters, flie his angry lookes,
     That I may ſee him iſſue Conquerour.

   • 1769, Firishta, translated by Alexander Dow, Tales translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi, volume I, Dublin: P. and W. Wilson et al., page iv:

     The lofty mountains roſe faint to the ſight and loſt their foreheads in the diſtant ſkies: the little hills, cloathed in darker green and ſkirted with embroidered vales, diſcovered the ſecret haunts of kids and bounding roes.

   • 1814, Walter Scott, chapter 12, in Waverley:

     "[...] and we may, God willing, meet with a roe. The roe, Captain Waverley, may be hunted at all times alike; for never being in what is called pride of grease, he is also never out of season, though it be a truth that his venison is not equal to that of either the red or fallow deer. But he will serve to show how my dogs run [...]"

2. A mottled appearance of light and shade in wood, especially in mahogany.

• roebuck

• EOR, ORE, Ore, Ore., REO, o'er, ore, öre, øre

Shortened form of roede, with regular loss of -de. From Proto-Germanic *rōdō.

• IPA^(key): /ru/

• Audio

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• Hyphenation: roe
• Rhymes: -u

roe f or m (plural roes, diminutive roetje n)

1. Alternative form of roede
2. bundle of twigs, especially in Sinterklaas folklore

From Proto-Finnic *rooja. Cognate to Finnish ruoja and Votic roojõ (“dirt, mud, dirtiness, dirty”).

roe (genitive rooja, partitive rooja)

1. faeces, excrement

roe

1. inflection of roer:
   1. third-person singular present indicative
   2. second-person singular imperative

Old French roe < Latin rota.

roe f (plural roes)

1. wheel (cylindrical device)

• French: roue

From the noun ro.

roe (imperative ro, present tense roer, passive roes, simple past and past participle roa or roet, present participle roende)

1. (often reflexive, with seg) to calm (ned / down), to soothe

• “roe” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• roa

From the noun ro.

roe (present tense roar, past tense roa, past participle roa, passive infinitive roast, present participle roande, imperative roe/ro)

1. (often reflexive, with seg) to calm (ned / down), to soothe

• “roe” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Latin rota.

roe oblique singular, f (oblique plural roes, nominative singular roe, nominative plural roes)

1. wheel (cylindrical device)

• French: roue

roe

1. inflection of roer:
   1. third-person singular present indicative
   2. second-person singular imperative