Word.ws English Dictionary

rote

/ɹəʊt/US/ɹoʊt/

rote noun: mechanical routine; a fixed, habitual, repetitive, or mechanical course of procedure.

Noun (1)

rote (uncountable)

  1. Mechanical routine; a fixed, habitual, repetitive, or mechanical course of procedure.
    • The pastoral scenes from those commercials don’t bear too much resemblance to the rote of daily life on a farm.
    • He could perform by rote any of his roles in Shakespeare.
    Synonyms:
    roteness

Adjective

rote (comparative more rote, superlative most rote)

  1. By repetition or practice and without much thought.
    • The former may be seen as a more rote form of learning, contrasting with the latter which appears to include "executive" aspects2000, Ami Klin with Fred R. Volkmar and Sara S. Sparrow, Asperger syndrome, page 316

Verb

rote (third-person singular simple present rotes, present participle roting, simple past and past participle roted)

  1. (obsolete) To go out by rotation or succession; to rotate.
    • The Model of it was, That a third Part of the Senate or Parliament, ſhould rote out by Ballot every Year; […].1744, Zachary Grey, ann., Hudibras, in Three Parts, Written in the Time of the Late Wars: Corrected and Amended. With Large Annotations, and a Preface, by Zachary Grey, LL.D., vol. 2. Dublin: […]...
  2. (transitive) To learn or repeat by rote.
    • [Volumnia to Corolianus] "Because that it lies you on to speak/ to th' people, not by your own instruction,/ Nor by th' matter which your heart prompts you,/ But with such words that are but roted in/ your tongue,..." Coriolanus III.ii.52-55

Noun (2)

rote (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The roar of the surf; the sound of waves breaking on the shore.

Noun (3)

rote (plural rotes)

  1. A kind of guitar, the notes of which were produced by a small wheel or wheel-like arrangement; an instrument similar to the hurdy-gurdy.
    • extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co....
  2. Synonym of crowd.
    Synonyms:
    crowd

rote meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

rote in Hindi

process of committing to memory
रट्टा raṭṭā

rote in Tamil

நிரூடி

rote in Urdu

رٹائی

rote in Bengali

মুখস্থ, যান্ত্রিক পুনরাবৃত্তি
More languagesFewer languages
rote in Telugu
వల్లించు valliñcu
rote in Malayalam
അർത്ഥജ്ഞാനമില്ലാതെയുളള ഉരുവിടൽ, കാണാപ്പാഠം, വീണ്ടും വീണ്ടും പറച്ചിൽ
rote in Kannada
ಉರು, ಉರು ಹಚ್ಚುವುದು, ಹುರುಳರಿಯದ ಉಲಿ, ಬರಿಯ ಅಭ್ಯಾಸ
rote in Persian
طوطیواری tuti-vâri

Examples of rote in a sentence

  • He saffrons his speech with Latin which he knows all by rote.
  • In Brazil, Lima Barreto and Carlos Sussekind de Mendonça promoted drill and rote training as part of their antisoccer campaign.
  • Even directors with more formal aesthetics—the Kubrickian perfectionist David Fincher and the interpersonal realist Noah Baumbach—did not make rote, familiar-feeling movies.

All 12 example sentences with rote

Synonyms of rote

Forms of rote

Adjective
comparativemore rote
superlativemost rote
Verb
third-person singular presentrotes
present participleroting
past participleroted
pastroted
Noun
pluralrotes

Plural of rote: rotes

Origin of rote

From Middle English rote (“custom, habit, wont, condition, state”), further origin unknown. Found in the Middle English phrase bi rote (“by heart, according to form, expertly”), c. 1300. Some have proposed a relationship either with Old French rote/rute (“route”), or Latin rota (“wheel”) (see rotary), but the OED calls both suggestions groundless. Another explanation might be the metaphorical comparison between anything repetitive and playing the rote.

From Old Norse rót n (“tossing, pitching (of sea)”), perhaps related to rauta (“to roar”); see hrjóta. Compare Middle English routen (“to roar, bellow, storm, rage, howl”).

From Middle English rote, from Old French rote, probably of German origin; compare Middle High German rotte, and English crowd (“a kind of violin”).

Words formed from rote

Phrases with rote

Words that rhyme with rote

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about rote

What does rote mean?
Rote means mechanical routine; a fixed, habitual, repetitive, or mechanical course of procedure.
What is rote in Hindi?
Rote in Hindi is रट्टा (raṭṭā). See Rote meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is rote?
Rote can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce rote?
Rote is pronounced /ɹəʊt/ (UK).
What is the plural of rote?
The plural of rote is rotes.

Words near rote in the dictionary

  1. rotches
  2. rotchet
  3. rotchets
  4. rotchie
  5. rotchies
  6. rote
  7. Rote boobook
  8. Rote boobooks
  9. roted
  10. rotelike
  11. rotella

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rote (page history and authors); rote (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rote (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rote (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rote (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rote (Kannada 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.

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