Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A white incrustation of ice formed when supercooled water droplets freeze almost instantly on contact with a solid surface.
  • noun A coating, as of mud or slime, likened to a frosty film.
  • transitive verb To cover with or as if with frost or ice.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun White frost, or hoar-frost; congealed dew or vapor: same as frost, 3.
  • Same as ream.
  • noun A Middle English or modern dialectal form of rim.
  • To freeze or congeal into hoar-frost.
  • noun Number.
  • noun Thought expressed in verse; verse; meter; poetry; also, a composition in verse; a poem, especially a short one; a tale in verse.
  • noun Agreement in the terminal sounds of two or more words, namely in the last accented vowel and the sounds following, if there be any, while the sounds preceding differ; also, by extension, such agreement in the initial sounds (initial rime, usually called alliteration). See homœote-leuton, and compare assonance.
  • noun A verse or line agreeing with another in terminal sounds: as, to string rimes together.
  • noun A word answering in sound to another word.
  • To number; count; reckon.
  • To compose in verse; treat in verse; versify.
  • To put into rime: as, to rime a story.
  • To bring into a certain condition by riming; influence by rime.
  • To compose verses; make verses.
  • To accord in the terminal sounds; more widely, to correspond in sound; assonate; harmonize; accord; chime.
  • noun A Middle English form of rim.
  • noun A chink; a fissure; a rent or long aperture.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A rent or long aperture; a chink; a fissure; a crack.
  • noun White frost; hoarfrost; congealed dew or vapor.
  • verb To rhyme. See rhyme.
  • intransitive verb To freeze or congeal into hoarfrost.
  • noun A step or round of a ladder; a rung.
  • noun Rhyme. See rhyme.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rhyme
  • noun linguistics the 2nd part of a syllable, from the vowel on, as opposed to the onset
  • verb Obsolete form of rhyme.
  • noun meteorology, uncountable ice formed by the rapid freezing of cold water droplets of fog onto a cold surface.
  • noun meteorology, uncountable a coating or sheet of ice so formed.
  • noun uncountable a film or slimy coating.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun ice crystals forming a white deposit (especially on objects outside)
  • noun correspondence in the sounds of two or more lines (especially final sounds)
  • verb be similar in sound, especially with respect to the last syllable
  • verb compose rhymes

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English rim, from Old English hrīm.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English, from Old English rīm. Influenced in meaning by Old French rime from the same Germanic source.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English rim, from Old English hrīm, from Proto-Germanic *hrīman (“hoarfrost”) (compare Dutch rijm, Danish rim); akin to Latvian krèims ("cream") and Latin bruma ("winter solstice").

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Examples

  • Because we vse the word rime (though by maner of abusion) yet to helpe that fault againe we apply it in our vulgar Poesie another way very commendably & curiously.

    The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

  • Salamander (1879) in terza rime is especially memorable.

    Nobel Prize in Literature 1910 - Presentation Speech 1910

  • There's clear ice, there's a granulated form, which is called rime icing.

    CNN Transcript Feb 13, 2009 2009

  • Conditions last night diabolically perfect for coating aircraft which is called rime ice.

    CNN Transcript Feb 13, 2009 2009

  • A Delta crew landing around the same time as the Colgan flight reported what is called rime icing.

    CNN Transcript Feb 13, 2009 2009

  • Early clues tonight to why it happened -- the cockpit voice recorder picking up mention of ice, conditions last night diabolically -- diabolically perfect for coating aircraft in what is called rime ice.

    CNN Transcript Feb 13, 2009 2009

  • But what can be the most dangerous sort of ice is called rime ice, which is not ice like you shovel, it's just these tiny little patterns of ice which can develop on a wing.

    CNN Transcript Feb 2, 2005 2005

  • It is an allegory written, with the exception of a few heroic couplets, in the seven-line stanza known as rime royal, and consists of nearly six thousand lines in forty-five divisions or chapters.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

  • Yet the rime, which is as evident as the recurring strokes of a tack-hammer in Pope, is scarcely heard at all in _My Last Duchess_.

    Robert Browning: How to Know Him William Lyon Phelps 1904

  • The pilot was told to maintain an altitude of 10,000 feet as he headed southwest over northern New Jersey as a controller warned him about the conditions in the clouds above - specifically accumulations of ice particles known as rime.

    The Seattle Times 2011

Comments

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  • Emir in reverse.

    July 22, 2007

  • Scots - frost, ice crystals.

    December 5, 2007

  • One of the 2 arms of a lave net that was used for catching salmon moving with the outgoing tide. See comments and The Countryman citation for putcher, kype, and lave net.

    September 1, 2010

  • rimw

    White frost, or hoar-frost; congealed dew or vapor: same as frost, 3.

    To freeze or congeal into hoar-frost.

    January 4, 2022