rib

/ɹɪb/

rib noun: any of a series of long curved bones occurring in 12 pairs in humans and other animals and extending from the spine to or toward the sternum.

Noun (1)

rib (plural ribs)

Any of a series of long curved bones occurring in 12 pairs in humans and other animals and extending from the spine to or toward the sternum.
- On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex.1882, Thomas Hardy, chapter I, in Two on a Tower. A Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 1
(broadly) A part or piece, similar to a rib, and serving to shape or support something.
- a broken rib on the umbrella
A cut of meat enclosing one or more rib bones.
Any of several curved members attached to a ship's keel and extending upward and outward to form the framework of the hull.
Any of several transverse pieces that provide an aircraft wing with shape and strength.
A long, narrow, usually arched member projecting from the surface of a structure, especially such a member separating the webs of a vault
A strip of metal running along the top of the barrel that serves as a sighting plane.
A raised ridge in knitted material or in cloth.
The main, or any of the prominent veins of a leaf.
A teasing joke.
(Ireland, colloquial) A single strand of hair.
A stalk of celery.
(archaic, humorous, literary) A wife or woman.
- 'Near to it was the portrait of his rib, Dame Middleton.'1862, George Borrow, Wild Wales

Verb

rib (third-person singular simple present ribs, present participle ribbing, simple past and past participle ribbed)

To shape, support, or provide something with a rib or ribs.
To tease or make fun of someone in a good-natured way.
- He always gets ribbed for his outrageous shirts.
- Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves.2025 March 7, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, “Inside the Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed With Elon Musk”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
To enclose, as if with ribs, and protect; to shut in.
- It [lead] were too gross
  To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
(transitive) To leave strips of undisturbed ground between the furrows in ploughing (land).

Noun (2)

rib (plural ribs)

Hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale).
Costmary (Tanacetum balsamita).
Watercress (Nasturtium officinale).

Noun (3) capitalized: RIB

RIB (plural RIBs)

(abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of rigid inflatable boat (“a lightweight inflatable boat with a rigid hull”).

Synonyms:

rigid inflatable boat, rigid-hulled inflatable boat, rhibbie, ribbie, RHIB
(Internet) routing information base

rib meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

rib in Tamil

curved bone: விலாவெலும்பு vilāvelumpu, பழுவெலும்பு paḻuvelumpu

rib in Malayalam

curved bone: വാരിയെല്ല് vāriyellŭ

More languagesFewer languages

rib in Kannada: ಪಕ್ಕೆಲುಬು, ಪಕ್ಕೆಲುಬಿಗೆ
rib in Sanskrit: पर्शु parśu
rib in Assamese: কামিহাড় kamihar
rib in Nepali: करङ karaṅ
rib in Tagalog: tadyang
rib in Arabic: ضِلْع ḍilʕ
rib in Malay: tulang rusuk, rusuk, kosta
rib in Indonesian: rusuk
rib in Persian: پهلو pahlu, دنده dande
rib in Thai: ซี่โครง sîi-kroong
rib in Vietnamese: xương sườn, sườn
rib in Myanmar: နံရိုး nam-rui:

Examples of rib in a sentence

His ribs broke under the weight of the rocks piled on his chest.
He dug an elbow into my ribs and guffawed at his own joke.
He guffawed and gave me a dig in the ribs after telling his latest joke.

All 40 example sentences with rib

Synonyms of rib

rigid inflatable boat
rigid-hulled inflatable boat
rhibbie
ribbie
RHIB

Forms of rib

Noun
plural	ribs
plural	RIBs
Verb
third-person singular present	ribs
present participle	ribbing
past participle	ribbed
past	ribbed

Past tense of rib: ribbed

Plural of rib: ribs

Origin of rib

From Middle English rib, ribbe, from Old English ribb (“rib”), from Proto-West Germanic *ribi, from Proto-Germanic *ribją (“rib, reef”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rebʰ- (“arch, ceiling, cover”). Cognate with Dutch rib (“rib”), Norwegian ribbe (“sparerib”), Norwegian ribben (“rib”), Low German ribbe (“rib”), German Rippe (“rib”), Old Norse rif (“rib, reef”), Serbo-Croatian rèbro (“rib”). (wife or woman): In reference to the creation of Eve from Adam's rib in the Bible.

From Middle English ribbe, from Old English ribbe (“hound's-tongue”).

Words formed from rib

Phrases with rib

Words that rhyme with rib

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about rib

What does rib mean?: Rib means any of a series of long curved bones occurring in 12 pairs in humans and other animals and extending from the spine to or toward the sternum.
What is rib in Hindi?: Rib in Hindi is पसली (paslī). See Rib meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is rib?: Rib can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce rib?: Rib is pronounced /ɹɪb/.
What is the plural of rib?: The plural of rib is ribs.

Words near rib in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: rib (page history and authors); RIB (page history and authors); rib (Kannada, 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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

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