rue
/ɹuː/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/ɹʉw/
rue noun: sorrow; repentance; regret.
Noun (1)
rue (uncountable)
- Sorrow; repentance; regret.
- When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, / "The heart out of the bosom was never given in vain; / 'Tis paid with sighs aplenty and sold for endless rue." / And I am two-and-twenty, and oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.1896, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “[Poem] XIII”, in A Shropshire Lad, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, The Bodley Head, published 1906, →OCLC, stanza 2, page 21
- Synonyms:
- contrition, misery, unhappiness, blueness, tristesse, mirthless, blues, crestfallenness, dejection, depression
- Pity; compassion.
- Synonyms:
- ruth, sympathy, bowels, commiseration, compassion, empathy, fellow feeling, mercy, pity, remorse
Verb
rue (third-person singular simple present rues, present participle ruing or rueing, simple past and past participle rued)
- To repent of or regret (some past action or event); to wish that a past action or event had not taken place.
- to rue the day
- I rued the day I crossed paths with her.
- Synonyms:
- afterthink, deprecate, regret, repent
- To cause to repent of sin or regret some past action.
- Synonyms:
- forthink, put the fear of God into, think over
- To cause to feel sorrow or pity.
- To feel compassion or pity; to take pity (on), to have compassion (on).
- […] till our Lord's clouds rue upon the earth, and send down a watring of rain: Truly , I think Christ's misty dew a welcome message from heaven, till my Lord's rain fall : […]1724, Samuel Rutherford, Mr. Rutherfoord's Letters, now divided in three parts ... The fifth edition, page 316
- which stirred men's hearts to rue upon them1842, Nicholas Ridley, The Life of Nicholas Ridley
- Synonyms:
- commiserate, compassionate, feel sorry for, mercify, compassion, condole, feel someone's pain, pity, take pity
- To feel sorrow or regret.
- Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “The Death of the Old Year”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC
Noun (2)
rue (countable and uncountable, plural rues)
- Any of various perennial shrubs of the genus Ruta, especially the herb Ruta graveolens (common rue), formerly used in medicines.
- But th'aged Nourse, her calling to her bowre, / Had gathered Rew, and Savine, and the flowre / Of Camphora, and Calamint, and Dill [...].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- Ophelia:
There’s fennel for you, and columbines: there’s rue for you; and here’s some for me: we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
Proper noun capitalized: Rue
Rue (plural Rues)
- A surname.
rue meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
rue in Tamil
- உரு
rue in Urdu
- افسوس, غم, پچھتاوا
rue in Bengali
- অনুশোচনা করা, আফসোস করা
rue in Malayalam
- be sorry about, regret, feel remorseful about
- പശ്ചാത്തപിക്കുക, അനുശോചിക്കുക, മനസ്താപപ്പെടുക, സംഭവിക്കാതിരുന്നെങ്കിൽ എന്ന് ആഗ്രഹിക്കുക, ഖേദിക്കുക, അനുതപിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
- rue in Kannada
- ಪಶ್ಚಾತ್ತಾಪಪಡು, ವ್ಯಥೆಪಡು, ಕೊರಗು, ವಿಷಾದಿಸು
- rue in Tagalog
- ruda, dora
- rue in Arabic
- سُذَاب suḏāb, فَيْجَن fayjan, حَزَاء ḥazāʔ
- rue in Persian
- سداب sodâb
- rue in Vietnamese
- cây vân hương
Examples of rue in a sentence
- I wept to see, and rued it from my heart.1614–1615, Homer, “(please specify the book number)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and...
- Thy will chose freely what it now so justly rues.1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert...
- And feminization of the homeland is something to be rued, while the feminized humiliation of the enemy for the sake of the fatherland is cause for commendation and celebration.2009, David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race:
- And was the fact she was no longer losing large chunks of time something to be celebrated or something to be rued?2012, Joy Fielding, Still Life:
Synonyms of rue
- contrition
- misery
- unhappiness
- blueness
- tristesse
- mirthless
- blues
- crestfallenness
- dejection
- depression
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- despondency
- distress
- dolefulness
- downheartedness
- forlornness
- grief
- ill-being
- infelicity
- melancholia
- melancholy
- mourn
- sadness
- sorrow
- sorrowfulness
- tristfulness
- undelight
- woe
- woefare
- wretchedness
- agenbite
- remorse
- compunction
- guilt
- penitence
- repentance
- self-reproach
- sorriness
- ruth
- sympathy
- commiseration
Forms of rue
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | rues |
| alternative form (obsolete) | rewe |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | rues |
| present participle | ruing |
| present participle | rueing |
| past participle | rued |
| past | rued |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Rues |
Origin of rue
From Middle English rewe, reowe, from Old English hrēow (“sorrow, regret, penitence, repentance, penance”), from Proto-West Germanic *hreuwu (“pain, sadness, regret, repentance”). Cognates include German reuen (“to regret, to repent”) and Dutch rouwen (“to mourn, to grieve”). Probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *krows-. If so, note the same sense evolution with in this case cognate Russian круши́ть (krušítʹ, “to destroy, to shatter”), Russian сокруша́ться (sokrušátʹsja, “to be distressed, to grieve (for, over)”). Also compare Czech truchlit from Proto-Slavic *truxlъ.
From Middle English rewen, ruwen, ruen, reowen, from Old English hrēowan (“to rue; make sorry; grieve”), perhaps influenced by Old Norse hryggja (“to distress, grieve”), from Proto-Germanic *hrewwaną (“to sadden; repent”).
From Middle English rue, from Anglo-Norman ruwe, Old French rue, from Latin rūta, from Ancient Greek ῥυτή (rhutḗ).
Words formed from rue
Phrases with rue
Words that rhyme with rue
Questions about rue
- What does rue mean?
- Rue means sorrow; repentance; regret.
- What is rue in Tamil?
- Rue in Tamil is உரு. See Rue meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use rue in a sentence?
- I wept to see, and rued it from my heart.
- What part of speech is rue?
- Rue can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce rue?
- Rue is pronounced /ɹuː/ (UK).
- What is the plural of rue?
- The plural of rue is rues.
Words near rue in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rue (page history and authors); Rue (page history and authors); rue (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rue (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rue (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rue (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); rue (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: “rue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.