Word.ws English Dictionary

ride

UK/ɹaɪd/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northumbria/ɹɛɪd/

ride verb: to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, later also a bicycle etc. Also the ellipsis of ride cymbal.

ride: to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, later also a bicycle etc
Image: Marek Ślusarczyk ( Tupungato ) Photo portfolio, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

ride (third-person singular simple present rides, present participle riding, simple past rode or (obsolete) rade or (obsolete) rid, past participle ridden or (now colloquial and nonstandard) rode)

  1. (ambitransitive) To transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, later also a bicycle etc.
    • I ride to work every day and park the bike outside the office.
    • Go Peto, to horse: for thou, and I, / Haue thirtie miles to ride yet ere dinner time.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  2. (ambitransitive) To be transported in a vehicle; to travel as a passenger.
    • Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
    • In an elaborately built, indoor San Francisco, passengers ride cable cars through quiet, hilly streets.1960 June 20, “Biznelcmd”, in Time, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC
  3. (South Africa, US, informal, transitive) To transport (someone) in a vehicle.
    • The cab rode him downtown.
    • 'Hurt him considerably. Ride him down to Bellevue Hospital and dump him nearby. Got that?' 'Yassuh.' 'Don't be seen.' 'Nossuh.'1954, Ian Fleming, “No Sensayuma”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 73
  4. (intransitive) Of a ship: to sail, to float on the water.
    • Why name I ev'ry Place where Youths abound? / 'Tis Loſs of Time; and a too fruitful Ground. / The Bajan Baths, where Ships at Anchor ride, / And wholeſome Streams from Sulphur Fountains glide: […]a. 1701, [John] Dryden, “Book I”, in Ovid, Ovid’s Art of Love. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], published 1709, →OCLC, pages 19–20
    • By noon the sea went very high indeed, and our ship rode forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we thought once or twice our anchor had come home […]1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC
  5. (intransitive, transitive) To be carried or supported by something lightly and quickly; to travel in such a way, as though on horseback.
    • The witch cackled and rode away on her broomstick.
  6. (transitive) To traverse by riding.
    • Early women tobogganists rode the course in the requisite attire of their day: skirts. In spite of this hindrance, some women riders turned in very respectable performances.1999, David Levinson, Karen Christensen, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present
  7. (transitive) To convey, as by riding; to make or do by riding.
    • How many races have you ridden this year?
    • The only men that safe can ride / Mine errands on the Scottish side.1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “(please specify the introduction or canto number, or chapter name)”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald...
  8. (figuratively, transitive) To exploit or take advantage of (a situation).
    • Now the question is: Can Lema ride his present impetus to a third tournament victory in the pressure-loaded Open or will he run out of steam?1964 June 16, “All Eyes On Lema At U.S. Open This Week”, in The Indianapolis Star, volume 62, number 11, Indianapolis, Ind., page 22
    • By labeling milk free of the artificial hormone, the dairy industry can ride the popularity of natural foods, without the greater expense and special feeds required to produce milk that can be fully certified as “organic.”2006 October 7, Andrew Pollack, “Which Cows Do You Trust?”, in The New York Times
  9. (intransitive) To support a rider, as a horse; to move under the saddle.
    • A horse rides easy or hard, slow or fast.
  10. (ambitransitive, slang) To mount (someone) to have sex with them.
    • Cowboy. That's what he calls me when we are like this. It's as if I'm sitting in a saddle and he is my horse. And when he starts to buck, I ride.1986, Sidney Brinkley, “Passion”, in Joseph Beam, editor, In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology, page 131
    • She rode him hard, and he squeezed her breasts, and she came again.1997, Linda Howard, Son of the Morning, page 345
  11. (Ireland, ambitransitive, slang) To have sex with (someone).
    Synonyms:
    do it
  12. (colloquial, transitive) To nag or criticize; to annoy (someone).
    • “One old boy started riding me about not having gone to Vietnam; I just spit my coffee at him, and he backed off.2002, Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the haunted generation, page 375
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  1. (intransitive) Of clothing: to gradually move (up) and crease; to ruckle.
    • In athletics, triple jumper Ashia Hansen advises a thong for training because, while knickers ride up, ‘thongs have nowhere left to go’: but in Beijing Britain's best are likely, she says, to forgo knickers altogether, preferring to go commando for their country under their GB kit.2008 July 27, Ann Kessel, The Guardian
  2. (intransitive) To rely, depend (on).
    • With so much riding on the new payments system, it was thus a grave embarrassment to the government when the tariff for 2006-07 had to be withdrawn for amendments towards the end of February.2006 March 9, “Grappling with deficits”, in The Economist
  3. (intransitive) Of clothing: to rest (in a given way on a part of the body).
    • She's wearing inky-blue jeans that ride low enough on her hips that her aquamarine thong peeks out teasingly at the back.2001 September 16, Jenny Eliscu, “Oops...she's doing it again”, in The Observer
  4. To play defense on the defensemen or midfielders, as an attackman.
  5. To manage insolently at will; to domineer over.
    • The nobility[…] could no longer endure to be ridden by bakers, coblers[sic], brewers, and the like.1731, Jonathan Swift, The Presbyterians Plea of Merit
  6. To overlap (each other); said of bones or fractured fragments.
  7. (transitive) To monitor (some component of an audiovisual signal) in order to keep it within acceptable bounds.
    • vocal riding
    • The board operator normally watches the meter scale marked for modulation percentage, riding the gain to bring volume peaks into the 85% to 100% range.2006, Simran Kohli, Radio Jockey Handbook
  8. In jazz, to play in a steady rhythmical style.
    • The quintet in Propheticape muses out-of-measured-time until Holland leads it into swift, riding jazz.2000, Max Harrison, Charles Fox, Eric Thacker, The Essential Jazz Records: Modernism to postmodernism, page 238

Noun

ride (plural rides)

  1. An instance of riding.
    • Can I have a ride on your bike?
    • We took the horses for an early-morning ride in the woods.
  2. (informal) A vehicle.
    • That's a nice ride; what did it cost?
    • pimp my ride
  3. An amusement ridden at a fair or amusement park.
    • the kids went on all the rides
  4. A lift given to someone in another person's vehicle.
    • Can you give me a ride home?
  5. (UK) A road or avenue cut in a wood, for riding; a bridleway or other wide country path.
    • We walked, perhaps, half a mile […], and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent.1913, Rudyard Kipling, “The Edge of the Evening”, in A Diversity of Creatures, London: Macmillan and Co., […], published 1917, →OCLC, page 276
    • "Mr Fawcett comes down the ride, rushing his chair along like it was a racing car... He carried on down the ride. Next thing Miss Harmsworth comes down the ride from the field..."2015, Roderic Jeffries, Death in the Coverts, →ISBN
  6. (UK, archaic, dialectal) A saddle horse.
    • Stella, who in her day was a beautiful ride.1904, Country Gentleman
  7. (Ireland) A person (or sometimes a thing or a place) that is visually attractive.
    • Absolutely, and I agree about Madonna. An absolute ride *still*. :-) M.2007 July 14, Michael O'Neill, “Re: More mouthy ineffectual poseurs...[was Re: Live Earth - One Of The Most Important Events On This Particular Planet - don't let SCI distract you”, in...
  8. (jazz) A steady rhythmical style.
  9. (figuratively) A wild, bewildering experience of some duration.
    • That story was a ride from start to finish.
    • We all started to dance / Without wearing no life vest / We all started to dance / It was quite a ride2002, “Manila”, performed by Seelenluft ft. Michael Smith
  10. (slang, vulgar) An act of sexual intercourse.
    • I gave my boyfriend a ride before breakfast.
    Synonyms:
    shag, fuck, cop, bang
  11. A district inspected by an excise officer.
  12. (historical) A fault caused by the overlapping of leads, etc.

Also used as

ride is also the ellipsis of ride cymbal.

ride meaning in Hindi, Nepali, Arabic and Malay

ride in Hindi

to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, bicycle etc.
सवार होना savār honā

ride in Nepali

to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, bicycle etc.
चढ्नु caḍhnu

ride in Arabic

to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, bicycle etc.
رَكِبَ rakiba, اِمْتَطَى imtaṭā, اقتعد
to be transported in a vehicle as a passenger
رَكِبَ rakiba
instance of riding
رُكُوب rukūb
''(informal)'' vehicle
آليَّة

ride in Malay

to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, bicycle etc.
menaiki, menunggang
More languagesFewer languages
ride in Persian
سواری کردن savâri kardan, راندن rândan
ride in Thai
ขี่ kìi, ขับ kàp, โดยสาร dooi-sǎan, สาร sǎan
ride in Vietnamese
lái, cưỡi, cỡi, đi
ride in Myanmar
စီး ci:, စိုင်း cuing:

Examples of ride in a sentence

  • I raced him to the car, but he was there first, so he got to ride shotgun.
  • Hold on to my umbrella while I ride the roller coaster.
  • Keep your belt fastened; this is going to be quite a bumpy ride.

All 40 example sentences with ride

Synonyms of ride

All synonyms of ride

Forms of ride

third-person singular presentrides
present participleriding
pastrode
past participleridden
past (obsolete)rade
past (obsolete)rid
past participle (nonstandard, colloquial)rode
first-person singular past (archaic)rid
first-person singular past (archaic)rade
second-person singular present (archaic)ridest
second-person singular past (archaic)rodest
second-person singular past (archaic)rid
second-person singular past (archaic)rade
third-person singular present (archaic)rideth
third-person singular past (archaic)rid
third-person singular past (archaic)rade
plural past (archaic)rid

Past tense of ride: rode

Plural of ride: rides

Origin of ride

From Middle English riden, from Old English rīdan, from Proto-West Germanic *rīdan, from Proto-Germanic *rīdaną (“to ride”), from Proto-Indo-European *Hreydʰ- (“to ride”), from *h₃reyH- (“to move”), from *h₃er- (“to move, stir”). Cognates From Proto-Germanic: North Frisian ride, ridj, rir (“to ride”), West Frisian ride (“to ride”), Dutch rijden, ryden (“to ride; to drive”), German reiten, reuten (“to ride”), German Low German rieden (“to ride; to drive”), Limburgish rieje (“to ride; to drive”), Luxembourgish reiden (“to ride”), Vilamovian raeita, rajta (“to ride”), Danish ride (“to ride”), Faroese and Icelandic ríða (“to ride”), Norwegian Bokmål ri, ride (“to ride”), Norwegian Nynorsk ri, rida, ride (“to ride”), Swedish rida (“to ride”). From Indo-European: Cornish ardh (“height”), Irish arad, ard, árd (“high, tall”), Manx ard (“high, tall”), Scottish Gaelic àrd (“high”), Welsh ardd (“hill, upland”), Latin irrītō (“to excite, incite, stimulate; to exasperate”), Ancient Greek ὀρῑ́νω (orī́nō, “to move, stir”), Albanian rashë (“to have fallen; to have flopped”), Russian ре́ять (réjatʹ, “to fly, hover, soar”), Armenian հառնել (haṙnel, “to get up; to rise up”), Northern Kurdish rîtin...

Words formed from ride

Phrases with ride

90 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with ride

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ride

What does ride mean?
Ride means to transport oneself by sitting on and directing a horse, later also a bicycle etc.
What is ride in Hindi?
Ride in Hindi is सवार होना (savār honā). See Ride meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is ride?
Ride can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce ride?
Ride is pronounced /ɹaɪd/ (UK).
What is the past tense of ride?
The past tense of ride is rode.

Words near ride in the dictionary

  1. riddling
  2. riddlingly
  3. riddlings
  4. Riddoch syndrome
  5. RIDDOR
  6. ride
  7. ride a hobby
  8. ride a horse foaled by an acorn
  9. ride a horse foaled of an acorn
  10. ride a rantipole
  11. ride along

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ride (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:

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

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