Word.ws English Dictionary

kex

UK/kɛks/

kex noun: the dried stem of certain large herbaceous plants.

Noun

kex (plural kexes)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) The dried stem of certain large herbaceous plants.
    • "I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or victuals of some sort, hey? […] I should be as dry as kex wi' travelling so far."1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  2. (obsolete) A plant having such a stem; a weed, a kecksy.
  3. (rare) A dry husk or covering.
    • On the bedside table a new package of cigarettes and a traveling clock had for neighbor a nicely wrapped box containing the green figurine of a girl skier which shone through the double kix.1972, Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, McGraw-Hill, published 1972, pages 100–101

Forms of kex

pluralkexes
alternative formkix

Origin of kex

From Middle English kex. Origin unknown; but compare Welsh cecys (“hollow stalks”) and Welsh cegid (“hemlock”), apparently from the same source as Latin cicūta (“hemlock”).

Words that rhyme with kex

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about kex

What does kex mean?
Kex means the dried stem of certain large herbaceous plants.
What part of speech is kex?
Kex is a noun.
How do you pronounce kex?
Kex is pronounced /kɛks/ (UK).
What is the plural of kex?
The plural of kex is kexes.

Words near kex in the dictionary

  1. kewpie dolls
  2. kewpies
  3. kewra
  4. kews
  5. Kewstoke
  6. kex
  7. kexes
  8. kexin
  9. kexins
  10. kext
  11. kexts

Source and license

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