Word.ws English Dictionary

roe

UK/ˈɹəʊ//ˈɹoʊ/

roe noun: eggs of fish. Also the ellipsis of roe deer.

roe: eggs of fish
Image: Alter welt, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

roe (usually uncountable, plural roes)

  1. (usually) Eggs of fish.
    • It was quite flavourless, except that, where its innards had been imperfectly removed, silver traces of roe gave it an unpleasant bitterness.1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 40
    • Today, some seafood experts say, the cheaper (though mushier) roe feeds 60 percent of the market.2003 July 20, Jeffrey Gettleman, “Humble Paddlefish Fulfills Southerners' Caviar Dreams”, in The New York Times
  2. (usually) Sperm of certain fish.
    Synonyms:
    milt
  3. (usually) Ovaries of certain crustaceans.

Noun (2)

roe (plural roe or roes)

  1. A mottled appearance of light and shade in wood, especially in mahogany.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Roe

US/ɹoʊ/

Roe (countable and uncountable, plural Roes)

  1. A surname transferred from the nickname.
  2. A town in Monroe County, Arkansas, United States.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Roe

US/ɹoʊ/

Roe

  1. (US, abbreviation, ellipsis, informal) Ellipsis of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court case which legalized abortion and reaffirmed the existence of a right to privacy under due process following the 14th Amendment.
    • Ultimately, Ms. Bottone said she just wanted to know whether she could keep driving in the H.O.V. lane for the remainder of her pregnancy, as she said she had in her previous pregnancies, long before the overturning of Roe.2022 July 12, Luke Vander Ploeg, “Can You Drive Alone in the H.O.V. Lane if You’re Pregnant? A Post-Roe Quandary.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Roe

US/ɹoʊ/

Roe

  1. A river in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Noun (3) capitalized: Roe

US/ɹoʊ/

Roe (plural Roes)

  1. (FFXIV fandom slang) An individual of the orclike Roegadyn race.
    • My fiance is a Roe that looks pretty close to Ganondorf.2016 April 5, sammiimariie, Reddit
    • I've seen a few Hroths and a decent amount of Roes in my time on Jenova.2021 April 30, Altair718, Reddit

Noun (4) capitalized: ROE

ROE (plural ROEs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of return on equity, a measure of how well a company used reinvested earnings to generate additional earnings.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of rule(s) of engagement, a/the rule(s) governing when to fire or return fire.
  3. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of record of employment.

Noun (5) capitalized: RoE

RoE (plural RoEs)

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of ROE.

Also used as

roe is also the ellipsis of roe deer.

roe meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

roe in Tamil

ரோ

roe in Bengali

রো

roe in Telugu

రో

roe in Malayalam

eggs of fish
ഇണർ iṇaṟ, പനഞ്ഞിൽ panaññil
More languagesFewer languages
roe in Kannada
ರೋ
roe in Punjabi
ਰੋ
roe in Gujarati
રોએ
roe in Odia
ରୋ
roe in Tagalog
bihud
roe in Persian
اشپل ešpel
roe in Thai
ไข่ปลา kài bplaa
roe in Vietnamese
trứng cá

Examples of roe in a sentence

  • “We are the people that pull eel grass between our teeth to eat the herring roe.”
  • Roe admitted that he may have misinjected drugs during the abortion.
  • He might as well have ordered the lion to loose his death-grip on the roe.

All 12 example sentences with roe

Synonyms of roe

Forms of roe

Noun
pluralroes
pluralroe
pluralRoes
pluralROEs
alternative formRoE
alternative formR.O.E.
alternative formR. O. E.
alternative formR.o.E.
alternative formR. o. E.
pluralRoEs
Proper noun
pluralRoes

Plural of roe: roe or roes

Origin of roe

From Middle English rowe, rowne, roun, rawne, from Old English *hrogn (“spawn, fish eggs, roe”), from Proto-Germanic *hrugnaz, *hrugną (“spawn, roe”), from Proto-Indo-European *krek- (“(frog) spawn”). Cognate with Dutch roge (“roe”), German Low German Rögen (“roe”), German Rogen (“roe”), Danish rogn, ravn (“roe”), Swedish rom (“roe”), Icelandic hrogn (“roe”), Lithuanian kurkulai̇̃ (“frog spawn”), Russian кряк (krjak, “frog spawn”).

From Middle English ro, roa, from Old English rā, rāha, from Proto-West Germanic *raihō, from Proto-Germanic *raihô, *raihą, from *róyko-, from Proto-Indo-European *rey- (“spotted, streaked”). See also Saterland Frisian Räi, Dutch ree, German Reh; also Irish riabh (“tripe, streak”), Latvian ràibs (“spotted”), Russian рябо́й (rjabój, “mottled fur”).

From a Middle English nickname meaning a roe.

Words formed from roe

Phrases with roe

Words that rhyme with roe

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about roe

What does roe mean?
Roe means eggs of fish.
What is roe in Tamil?
Roe in Tamil is ரோ. See Roe meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is roe?
Roe can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce roe?
Roe is pronounced /ˈɹəʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of roe?
The plural of roe is roes.

Words near roe in the dictionary

  1. Rodwell
  2. Rodwells
  3. rodwood
  4. rodwork
  5. Rodynske
  6. roe
  7. roe deer
  8. Roe Green
  9. Roe's poison
  10. roe-sick
  11. Roeber

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roe (page history and authors); Roe (page history and authors); ROE (page history and authors); RoE (page history and authors); roe (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roe (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roe (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roe (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roe (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roe (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roe (Odia, 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:

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

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