Ryes

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ɹaɪz/

Definitions

1. Multiple varieties of cereal grains belonging to the genus Secale, known for their tall stalks and use in baking and distilling ; plural form referring to several cultivated grasses used primarily for grain production and animal fodder ; several types of hardy cereal plants that thrive in cooler climates and are used in food products and beverages
2. Various strains of grassy crops grown primarily for their edible seeds; plural term indicating more than one type of these grains; cultivated species used in farming for grain, livestock feed, and alcohol production
3. Several kinds of cereal plants characterized by their robust growth and grain-bearing heads; a plural noun denoting multiple kinds of this grain; types of agricultural crops used for food, feed, and creating spirits

Etymology: "Ryes" is simply the plural of "rye", the grain, so the word's story is really the story of "rye" itself. The English word descends from Old English "rygě", which goes back to a Proto-Germanic form, "rugiz", reconstructed by scholars from the shared vocabulary of the Germanic languages. German "Roggen", Dutch "rogge" and Old Norse "rugr" all come from the same root, and the Swedish "råg" and Danish "rug" are its modern descendants. The surprising reach of this root lies in the Slavic and Baltic languages. Russian "рожь" (rozh') and Latvian "rudzi" are not borrowings from German; they point to a shared ancestry for the grain's name across both branches of the family. Such overlap suggests the word for this crop was already in use in the distant common past of these languages, long before English had any written record of it.

Synonyms: grain, cereal