Word Confusion: Rye versus Wry

Plural for noun: ryes

Third person present verb: wries
Past tense or past participle: wried
Gerund or present participle: wrying

Noun:
A wheatlike cereal plant having soft bluish-green leaves, bristly flower spikes, and light brown grain that tolerates poor soils and low temperatures ¹

• Grains of this, used mainly for making bread or whiskey and for fodder
• [As modifier] Rye flour
• [Chiefly North American, as modifier] Short for rye bread

[Also rye whiskey] A straight whiskey distilled from a mash containing 51 percent or more rye grain

• [Northeastern US and Canada] A blended whiskey

[Dialect] A gentleman ²

• A male Gypsy

• Bitterly or disdainfully ironic, or amusing

[Of a person’s face or features] Twisted into an expression of disgust, disappointment, or annoyance

[Archaic; of the neck or features] Distorted or turned to one side

Devious in course or purpose

• Misdirected

Contrary

• Perverse
• Warped

Distorted or perverted, as in meaning

Bend or wind to one side

Verb, intransitive:
[Obsolete] Twist ²

• Writhe

To turn (away)

• To swerve
• To deviate from the right way
• To go away or astray

Verb, transitive:
[Obsolete] To twist or contort the body, face, etc.²

[Obsolete] To pull out of or as if out of proper shape

To divert

• To cause to turn away

[Obsolete] To cover

• Clothe
• Cover up
• Cloak
• Hide

Generally, rye whiskey is best with/for cocktails like the Manhattan and old fashioned.

You can’t make a proper old fashioned, Sazerac, or Manhattan without rye whiskey.

Multi-grain bagels, rye crackers, brown rice, and oatmeal fuel muscles and protect against cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

Noun:
The Latin name for rye is Secale cereale of the Gramineae family.

Monotony came from the self-sufficiency of small farms; since bread was the staple food, most farms grew wheat, along with other cereals like rye, oat, buckwheat, maize, and barley.

Annual cover crops such as vetch, triticale, rye, winter wheat, or Austrian winter peas should be sown in mid-September.

A least a bit of rye flour is required to make rye bread.

There was a half a bottle of rye left.

Ruth ordered four rounds of quadruple ryes, Faulkner ordered four rounds of moonshine.

Gimme a pastrami on rye.

Titus was getting almost weepy about this when Patrice limped in with the lunch and spread it out on the marble table: hot pastrami on rye, big pickles, pastries, and coffee in white cardboard tubs.

He’s a right rye, this one.

Director Peter Evans highlights the play’s wry humour and latent evil with a low-key, ironic spin (Cambridge).

He pulled a wry face as he swallowed, setting the cup down on the table again.

Aliette made a wry face, and turned away disbelieving.

Elizabeth styled him her pygmy; his enemies delighted in vilifying his wry neck, crooked back. and splay foot, and in Bacon’s essay “On Deformity”, it was said, “the world takes notice that he paints out his little cousin to the life.”

The term wry-neck or torticollis is applied to a condition in which the head assumes an abnormal attitude, which is usually one of combined lateral flexion and rotation.

His tongue-in-cheek comparison of the religious life with the life of a fox-hunting man has a certain wry panache (Cambridge).

She had a wry sense of humor.

His “revised performances”, created from existing works, often make wry commentaries on the content of the source material (Cambridge).

He could be wry and sardonic about the claims of religious faith — but just as wary of metaphysical or ideological faith (Cambridge).

Verb, intransitive:
“This Phebus gan awayward for to [wrying].” – Chaucer.

“Must murder wives much better than themselves / For wrying but a little!” – Shakespeare.

They have wrested and wryed his doctrine.” – Robinson

Verb, transitive:
“Guests by hundreds, not one caring / If the dear host’s neck were wried. – R. Browning.

“[Wry] you in that mantle.” – Chaucer.

1. Old English ryge, of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch rogge and the German Roggen.
2. From the Romany rai, which is from the Sanskrit rājan meaning king; see rajah.

1. Middle English, meaning deviate, swerve, contort.
   • Early 16th century, in the sense of contorted, from the Old English wrīgian meaning tend, incline.
2. Middle English wrien, from the Old English wrigian meaning to turn and akin to the Middle High German rigel meaning kerchief wound around the head, the Greek rhiknos meaning shriveled, the Avestan urvisyeiti meaning he turns.