Word.ws English Dictionary

root beer

UK/ˈɹuːt ˌbɪə//ˈɹut ˌbɪɹ/

root beer noun: a beverage, most often a carbonated soft drink made from a combination of vanilla, cherry tree bark, licorice root, sarsaparilla root, sassafras root bark, nutmeg, anise, and molasses, among other things.

root beer: a beverage, most often a carbonated soft drink made from a combination of vanilla, cherry tree...
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

root beer (countable and uncountable, plural root beers)

  1. A beverage, most often a carbonated soft drink made from a combination of vanilla, cherry tree bark, licorice root, sarsaparilla root, sassafras root bark, nutmeg, anise, and molasses, among other things.
    • In 1919, when Roy Allen and Frank Wright started selling their new root beer beverage to a thirsty America, national Prohibition was taking its grip on the country. Their timing couldn't have been better. No longer able to legally drink real beer, thirsty patriots had to settle for this sweet...2002, Todd Wilbur, Top Secret Recipes, Penguin, →ISBN
  2. A dark reddish-brown color, similar to the drink.
    • I just keep staring at all the ink we have, that wild variety of color, everything from rootbeer, midnight blue and cochineal to mauve, light doe, lilac, south sea green, maize, even pelican black, all line up in these plastic caps[…]2000, Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, page 26
    • […]most of our bucks have antlers that are varying degrees of brown, from a deep rich root beer shade to walnut to even light amber.2006, Tim Lewis, Bows, Swamps, Whitetails, page 28

root beer meaning in Tamil, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese

root beer in Tamil

வேர்பீர்

root beer in Indonesian

beverage with sarsaparilla root
rutbir

root beer in Thai

beverage with sarsaparilla root
รูตเบียร์

root beer in Vietnamese

beverage with sarsaparilla root
xá xị

Forms of root beer

pluralroot beers
alternative formrootbeer

Origin of root beer

The term is attested since before the lifetime of Charles Elmer Hires, but he is widely credited with popularizing it much further than it had previously been; his proprietary beverage was inspired by an earlier root tea, and he planned to sell it under that name, but he changed its name to broaden the sales appeal. For more, see Wikipedia at root beer § History.

Words that rhyme with root beer

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about root beer

What does root beer mean?
Root beer means a beverage, most often a carbonated soft drink made from a combination of vanilla, cherry tree bark, licorice root, sarsaparilla root, sassafras root bark, nutmeg, anise, and molasses, among other things.
What is root beer in Tamil?
Root beer in Tamil is வேர்பீர். See Root beer meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is root beer?
Root beer is a noun.
How do you pronounce root beer?
Root beer is pronounced /ˈɹuːt ˌbɪə/ (UK).
What is the plural of root beer?
The plural of root beer is root beers.

Words near root beer in the dictionary

  1. root accounts
  2. root and branch
  3. root around
  4. root bark
  5. root barks
  6. root beer
  7. root beer float
  8. root beer floats
  9. root beers
  10. root canal
  11. root canals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: root beer (page history and authors); root beer (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-root beer.wav.

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