Word.ws English Dictionary

dreg

/ˈdɹɛɡ/

dreg is the singular of dregs.

Meaning of dregs

Noun

dregs pl (normally plural, singular dreg)

  1. (plural, plural-normally) The sediment settled at the bottom of a liquid; the lees in a container of unfiltered wine.
    • For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red: it is full of mixture, and he powreth out of the same: but the dregges thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drinke them.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 75:8
  2. (figuratively, plural, plural-normally, the dregs) The worst and lowest part of something.
    • the dregs of society

Forms of dreg

pluraldregs

Origin of dreg

Borrowed from Old Norse dregg (“sediment”), from Proto-Germanic *dragjō (whence also Icelandic dregg, Swedish drägg), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrā́ks (“sediment”); see also Latin fraces (“lees of oil”), Albanian ndrag (“to make dirty, foul”), dra (“sediments of dairy products or liquids”).

Words formed from dreg

Phrases with dreg

Words that rhyme with dreg

19 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dreg

What is dreg the singular of?
Dreg is the singular of dregs.
How do you pronounce dreg?
Dreg is pronounced /ˈdɹɛɡ/.

Words near dreg in the dictionary

  1. dreeps
  2. dreer
  3. drees
  4. Dreeses
  5. dreest
  6. dreg
  7. dregealin
  8. dregeoside
  9. Dreger
  10. Dregers
  11. dreggier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dreg (page history and authors); dregs (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-dreg.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dreg.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dreg. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.