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• ale
  ale

  noun

  a malt beverage, darker, heavier, and more bitter than beer, containing about 6 percent alcohol by volume.
• A.L.E.
  A.L.E.

  abbreviation

  additional living expense.

ale

¹ American  

[ayl] / eɪl /

noun

• ales
  plural

1. a malt beverage, darker, heavier, and more bitter than beer, containing about 6 percent alcohol by volume.

2. British. beer.

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A.L.E. ² American  

abbreviation

Insurance.

1. additional living expense.

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ale British  

/ eɪl /

noun

1. a beer fermented in an open vessel using yeasts that rise to the top of the brew Compare beer lager 1

2. (formerly) an alcoholic drink made by fermenting a cereal, esp barley, but differing from beer by being unflavoured by hops

3. another word for beer

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• ales
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of ale

First recorded before 950; Middle English; Old English (e)alu (genitive ealoth ); cognate with Old Saxon alo-, Middle Dutch ale, ael, Old Norse ǫl; Lithuanian alùs, Old Church Slavonic olŭ; Finnish, Estonian olut

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Explanation

Ale is a particular type of beer. Ale would be a good thing to order if you ever visit a pub in Britain. Ale is yeast-fermented beer, brewed with sweet-tasting malted barley, and often with hops, to balance the sweetness with a more bitter flavor. In Britain, ale is considered to be any beer "other than lager, stout, or porter," while in the US ale is distinguished by the style of fermentation. The Old English origin of ale is ealu, "ale or beer." The Proto-Indo-European root has an implied meaning of "sorcery, magic, and intoxication."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ale ales

Some autumnal ale: It can be delightful when craft breweries churn out seasonally inspired flavors, but what happens when we start being served pumpkin beer in August, or Christmas beer before Halloween?

From Slate ● Oct. 14, 2026

Icy cold glasses of Tell the Truth, a light and lemony ale, sat before them on a high-top table beside a stenographer’s notebook and a laptop.

From Salon ● Oct. 4, 2026

Worn down by pestering, our parents relented and allowed ginger ale at Sunday dinner.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026

And in 2024, craft ale company Brew York also recalled cans of its Juice Forsyth IPA over concerns they could explode and injure people.

From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2026

There was no ale and only one withered apple left, but water flowed in the river hard by, from which John filled the leather flagons.

From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli

It’s a full meal in a pint glass, a little bitter, smoky and sweet, with zero in common with today’s nerdy low-cal ales.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026

This was one of the first ales he made in his Overtone brewery in Glasgow.

From BBC ● Jan. 28, 2026

Although these lagers can achieve foam stability similar to Belgian ales, the physics behind them vary significantly.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 29, 2025

“We’re having trouble finding Saymo, so we just keep ordering Shastas and ginger ales and hoping that he’ll roll up,” Mulaney said at the January presentation.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2025

Come evening there were sliced hams, boiled eggs, and roasted larks stuffed with garlic and onions, with pale ales and Myrish fire wines to help in their digestion.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

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Related Words

• brew
• malt
• suds

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