roe

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points: 3
Words With Friends: 3
Letters: 3

Pronunciation

/ˈɹəʊ/(UK)

See all 3 pronunciations

/ˈɹəʊ/(UK) · /ˈɹoʊ/(US) · /ɹoʊ/(US)

Definition of roe

13 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

(uncountable, usually)Eggs of fish.

“It was quite flavourless, except that, where its innards had been imperfectly removed, silver traces of roe gave it an unpleasant bitterness.”
“Today, some seafood experts say, the cheaper (though mushier) roe feeds 60 percent of the market.”

See all 13 definitions

noun

(uncountable, usually)Eggs of fish.

“It was quite flavourless, except that, where its innards had been imperfectly removed, silver traces of roe gave it an unpleasant bitterness.”
“Today, some seafood experts say, the cheaper (though mushier) roe feeds 60 percent of the market.”
(uncountable, usually)Sperm of certain fish.
(uncountable, usually)Ovaries of certain crustaceans.
(abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of roe deer.

“And let his foes like flockes of feareful Roes, Purſude by hunters, flie his angry lookes, That I may ſee him iſſue Conquerour.”
“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.”
“"[...] 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 [...]"”
A mottled appearance of light and shade in wood, especially in mahogany.
(abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of return on equity, a measure of how well a company used reinvested earnings to generate additional earnings.
(abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of rule(s) of engagement, a/the rule(s) governing when to fire or return fire.
(abbreviation, alt-of)Abbreviation of record of employment.
(alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of ROE.

name

(countable, uncountable)A surname transferred from the nickname.
(countable, uncountable)A town in Monroe County, Arkansas, United States.
(US, abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, informal)Ellipsis of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court case which legalized abortion and reaffirmed the existence of a right to privacy under due process following the 14th Amendment.

“Ultimately, Ms. Bottone said she just wanted to know whether she could keep driving in the H.O.V. lane for the remainder of her pregnancy, as she said she had in her previous pregnancies, long before the overturning of Roe.”
A river in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

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 kurkulai̇̃ (“frog spawn”), Russian кряк (krjak, “frog spawn”).