rye

Noun

1. A grain used extensively in Europe for making bread, beer, and (now generally) for animal fodder.
   • They bought a sack of rye and a sack of wheat with the intent to try their hand at milling and baking.

   Hypernyms: cereal grain corn

   Coordinate Terms: wheat barley maize corn

2. The grass Secale cereale from which the grain is obtained.
   • This field will be planted to rye next spring.
3. Ellipsis of rye bread.
   • Customer: A tuna sandwich, please. Waiter: Sure, hon. You want that on white, wheat, or rye?

   Hypernyms: bread food

   Coordinate Terms: white wheat pumpernickel

4. Ellipsis of rye whiskey, whiskey made mainly or wholly from rye grain.
   • He likes any whiskey, but his favorite is rye.
   • “Gimme a shot of rye.” The whiskey stung his throat hot and fragrant. - 1925, John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, 2nd section, page 146:
   • I bought a pint of rye at the liquor counter and carried it over to the stools and set it down on the cracked marble counter. - 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 159:
5. A drink (serving) of rye whiskey.
   • I'll have a rye, neat, please.
   • It concerns the gnomelike quality of the average American at a party. I have been to many parties where staid American business men have been transformed by a few ryes or bourbons into unpredictable gremlins out for...
6. Caraway (from the mistaken assumption that the whole seeds, often used to season rye bread, are the rye itself)
7. Ryegrass, any of the species of Lolium.
8. A disease of hawks.
   • And if it [vndeꝛ the peꝛch] be grene ſhe engenderith the Ry. The condicion of this euell is this, it wil ariſe in the hede and make the hede to ſwell, ⁊ the iyen all glaymous, and dyrke, and bot it haue helpe: it will...
   • Of all the diseases that belongs to these Hawkes, there bee onely three that they bee most subiect vnto, which is the Rye, the Crampe, and the Craye. - 1618, Symon Latham, Latham's Falconry:
9. A young man.
   • The Rye is my uncle, Hans Breitmann, Mr. Leland, whom all the Romanies know. His gipsy lore was great; […] - 1893, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, To Gipsyland, page 2:

   Hyponyms: Romany rye

   Coordinate Terms: rawnie