Word.ws English Dictionary

r rotunda

UK/ˌɑː.ɹəʊˈtʌn.də/US/ˌɑɹ.ɹoʊˈtʌn.də/

r rotunda noun: a curved form of the letter r, found in some medieval and fraktur scripts: ⟨ ꝛ ⟩.

r rotunda: a curved form of the letter r, found in some medieval and fraktur scripts: ⟨ ꝛ ⟩
Image: Joaopaulo1511, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

r rotunda (plural rs rotunda or rs rotundae)

  1. A curved form of the letter r, found in some medieval and fraktur scripts: ⟨ ꝛ ⟩.
    • […] completely informed about the decisions made and the reasons to make them, e.g. r rotunda does not figure in the transcription as the use of straight r and r rotunda is governed by the preceding character and thus completely predictable.1989, Arend Quak, Florus (Floor) Rhee, Palaeogermanica et onomastica., Rodopi, page 3
    • And certain geminated consonants are represented by capitals : ɢ, ɴ, ʀ, ꜱ. Does a form like haʀ mean a long r, or is it a scribal habit on the level of the usage of r rotunda, not straight r, after round letters? The occurrence of forms with -rr […]2000, Anna A. Grotans, Heinrich Beck, Anton Schwob, De consolatione philogiae: studies in honor of Evelyn S. Firchow, volume 2, page 624

Forms of r rotunda

pluralrs rotunda
pluralrs rotundae

Origin of r rotunda

From or representing Latin r rotunda (literally “round ‘r’”). The adjective rotunda is the feminine form of rotundus, inflected to agree with littera (“letter”), elliptically omitted (compare e caudata). The phrase is little attested in Latin, and might have been formed in English, or been borrowed from another language which formed it from those Latin roots.

Questions about r rotunda

What does r rotunda mean?
R rotunda means a curved form of the letter r, found in some medieval and fraktur scripts: ⟨ ꝛ ⟩.
What part of speech is r rotunda?
R rotunda is a noun.
How do you pronounce r rotunda?
R rotunda is pronounced /ˌɑː.ɹəʊˈtʌn.də/ (UK).
What is the plural of r rotunda?
The plural of r rotunda is rs rotunda.

Words near r rotunda in the dictionary

  1. R bombs
  2. r kid
  3. R month
  4. R months
  5. R number
  6. r rotunda
  7. r slur
  8. r slurs
  9. R Us
  10. R&AW
  11. r&b

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: r rotunda (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.

Last updated:

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