Word.ws English Dictionary

rent

/ˈɹɛnt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

pin pen merger/ˈɹɪ̟nt/

rent noun: a payment made by a tenant at intervals in order to lease a property. Also the simple past and past participle of rend.

Noun (1)

rent (countable and uncountable, plural rents)

  1. A payment made by a tenant at intervals in order to lease a property.
    • I am asking £300 a week rent.
    • This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  2. A similar payment for the use of a product, equipment or a service.
  3. A profit from possession of a valuable right, as a restricted license to engage in a trade or business.
    • A New York city taxicab license earns more than $10,000 a year in rent.
  4. An object for which rent is charged or paid.
  5. (obsolete) Income; revenue.
    • So bought an annual rent or two, / And liv'd, just as you see I do.1733–1737, Alexander Pope, [Imitations of Horace], London: […] R[obert] Dodsley [et al.]
  6. An amount of virtual currency paid by a player to preserve their character, inventory, etc. between gameplay sessions in a multi-user dungeon.

Verb

rent (third-person singular simple present rents, present participle renting, simple past and past participle rented)

  1. (transitive) To take a lease of premises in exchange for rent.
    • I rented a house from my friend's parents for a year.
  2. (informal, transitive) To grant a lease in return for rent.
    • We rented our house to our son's friend for a year.
  3. (transitive) To obtain or have temporary possession of an object (e.g. a movie) in exchange for money.
    • In Pärnu the beach is closed, but the Neptun cooperative still runs its beachfront shop, renting surfboards and beach chairs.1989 May, Priit J. Vesilind, “The Baltic: Arena of Power”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 632
  4. (informal, intransitive) To be leased or let for rent.
    • The house rents for five hundred dollars a month.

Noun (2)

rent (plural rents)

  1. A tear or rip in some surface.
    • [O]ne streak of copper-coloured light made a narrow rent between sea and sky.1876, [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], “The Cruel Crawling Foam”, in Joshua Haggard’s Daughter […], volume I, London: John Maxwell and Co. […], →OCLC, page 1
    • The brown paint on the door was so old that the naked wood showed between the rents.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter X, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC
  2. A division or schism.
    • [T]he White House was considering sending Vice President Humphrey to Cairo to patch up the many rents in U.S.—Egyptian relations.2002, Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967

Adjective

rent (comparative more rent, superlative most rent)

  1. That has been torn or rent; ripped; torn.
    • Indeed, we could clearly make out the arch and stony banks of this second cave, and, from their rent and jagged appearance, discovered that, like the first long passage down which we had passed through the cliff before we reached the quivering spur, it had to all appearance been torn in the bowels...1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, “The Spirit of Life”, in She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 286
    • Cleopatra is rent by a struggle between her newly-acquired dignity as a queen, and a strong impulse to put out her tongue at him.1898, George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

Proper noun capitalized: Rent

Rent

  1. A surname.

Also used as

rent is also the simple past and past participle of rend.

rent meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

rent in Hindi

payment made by a tenant
भाड़ा bhāṛā, किराया kirāyā

rent in Tamil

வாடகை

rent in Marathi

भाडे, भाड्याने, भाड्याचे

rent in Urdu

payment made by a tenant
بھاڑا bhāṛā, کرایہ kirāyā
More languagesFewer languages
rent in Bengali
ভাড়া, ভাড়া দেওয়া, ভাড়া নিতে
rent in Telugu
అద్దె adde
rent in Malayalam
വാടക, വാടകയ്ക്കെടുക്കാൻ, വാടകയ്ക്ക് എടുക്കാൻ
rent in Kannada
ಬಾಡಿಗೆ
rent in Punjabi
ਕਿਰਾਇਆ, ਕਿਰਾਏ'ਤੇ ਦੇਣ ਲਈ
rent in Gujarati
ભાડું, ભાડે આપવા માટે, ભાડે આપવા
rent in Odia
ଭଡ଼ା, ଭଡ଼ା ନିଅନ୍ତୁ, ଭଡ଼ା ନେବା ପାଇଁ
rent in Nepali
भाडा, भाडामा लिनुहोस्
rent in Arabic
أُجْرَة ʔujra, اِسْتَأْجَر istaʔjar, إِيجَار ʔījār, اِسْتَأْجَرَ istaʔjara
rent in Indonesian
sewa
rent in Persian
کرایه kerâya, اجاره ejâre, کرایه کردن kerâya kardan, اجاره کردن ejâre kardan
rent in Thai
ค่าเช่า kâa-châo, เช่า châo
rent in Vietnamese
thuê, mướn

Examples of rent in a sentence

  • We never ever argue, we never calculate / The currency we've spent / I love you, you pay my rent1987, “Rent”, in Actually, performed by Pet Shop Boys:
  • They found holes and rents in the iron but never reported them as they were never asked, and it wasn't their job.2020 September 23, Paul Bigland, “The tragic tale of the Tay Bridge disaster”, in Rail, page 81:

All 40 example sentences with rent

Forms of rent

Noun
pluralrents
Verb
third-person singular presentrents
present participlerenting
past participlerented
pastrented
Adjective
comparativemore rent
superlativemost rent

Past tense of rent: rented

Plural of rent: rents

Origin of rent

From Middle English rent, rente, from Old French rente, from Early Medieval Latin rendita, from Late Latin rendere, from Latin reddere.

See rend.

Words formed from rent

Phrases with rent

13 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with rent

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about rent

What does rent mean?
Rent means a payment made by a tenant at intervals in order to lease a property.
What is rent in Hindi?
Rent in Hindi is भाड़ा (bhāṛā), किराया (kirāyā). See Rent meaning in Hindi.
How do you use rent in a sentence?
We never ever argue, we never calculate / The currency we've spent / I love you, you pay my rent
What part of speech is rent?
Rent can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce rent?
Rent is pronounced /ˈɹɛnt/.
What is the plural of rent?
The plural of rent is rents.

Words near rent in the dictionary

  1. Rensselaer
  2. Rensselaer County
  3. rensselaerite
  4. Renstrom
  5. Renstroms
  6. rent
  7. rent boy
  8. rent boys
  9. rent control
  10. rent controls
  11. rent free

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rent (page history and authors); Rent (page history and authors); rent (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); rent (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-uk-rent.ogg, en-us-rent.ogg.

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