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• r
  r

  the theoretical intrinsic rate of increase of a population, equivalent to the difference between the birth and death rates divided by the number of individuals in the population.
• R
  R

  noun

  the 18th letter of the English alphabet, a consonant.
• r.
  r.

  abbreviation

  rabbi.
• R.
  R.

  abbreviation

  (in prescriptions) take.

r

¹ American  

Ecology.

1. the theoretical intrinsic rate of increase of a population, equivalent to the difference between the birth and death rates divided by the number of individuals in the population.

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r ² American  

abbreviation

• rs
  plural

1. radius.

2. Commerce. registered.

3. Electricity. resistance.

4. Physics. roentgen.

5. royal.

6. ruble.

7. rupee.

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R ³ American  

[ahr] / ɑr /

Or r

noun

• R's,
  plural
• Rs,
  plural
• r's,
  plural
• rs
  plural

1. the 18th letter of the English alphabet, a consonant.

2. any spoken sound represented by the letter R or r, as in ran, carrot, or rhyme.

3. something having the shape of R .

4. a written or printed representation of the letter R or r.

5. a device, as a printer's type, for reproducing the letter R or r.

6. three R's.

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R ⁴ American  

[ahr] / ɑr /

verb

1. Informal. are.

   Oysters R in season.

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R ⁵ American  

abbreviation

1. Trademark. restricted: a rating assigned to a movie by the MPA indicating that children under the age of 17 will not be admitted to a theater showing the film unless accompanied by an adult.

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R ⁶ American  

abbreviation

1. Chemistry. radical.

2. Mathematics. ratio.

3. regular: a man's suit or coat size.

4. Electricity. resistance.

5. Theater. stage right.

6. Physics. roentgen.

7. Chess. rook.

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R ⁷ American  

Symbol.

1. the 18th in order or in a series.

2. (sometimes lowercase) the medieval Roman numeral for 80.

3. Biochemistry. arginine.

4. Physics. universal gas constant.

5. registered trademark: written as superscript ® following a name registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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r. ⁸ American  

abbreviation

• rs
  plural

1. rabbi.

2. railroad.

3. railway.

4. range.

5. rare.

6. Commerce. received.

7. recipe.

8. replacing.

9. residence.

10. right.

11. rises.

12. river.

13. road.

14. rod.

15. royal.

16. rubber.

17. ruble.

18. Baseball. run; runs.

19. rupee.

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R. ⁹ American  

Or R.

abbreviation

1. (in prescriptions) take.

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R. ¹⁰ American  

abbreviation

1. rabbi.

2. Radical.

3. radius.

4. railroad.

5. railway.

6. (in South Africa) rand; rands.

7. Réaumur.

8. rector.

9. redactor.

10. regina.

11. Republican.

12. response.

13. rex.

14. river.

15. road.

16. royal.

17. ruble.

18. rupee.

19. Theater. stage right.

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R. ¹ British  

abbreviation

1. registered (trademark)

2. right

3. river

4. rouble

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R. ² British  

abbreviation

1. rabbi

2. rector

3. Regina

4. Republican

5. response (in Christian liturgy)

6. Rex

7. River

8. Royal

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R ³ British  

symbol

1. chem radical

2. currency

   1. rand

   2. rupee

3. Réaumur temperature (scale)

4. physics electronics resistance

5. roentgen or röntgen

6. chess rook

7. Royal

8. chem gas constant

9. 1. restricted exhibition (used to describe a category of film certified as unsuitable for viewing by anyone under the age of 18)

   2. ( as modifier )

      an R film

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r. ⁴ British  

abbreviation

1. rare

2. recto

3. Also: r.  rod (unit of length)

4. ruled

5. cricket baseball run(s)

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r ⁵ British  

/ ɑː /

noun

1. the 18th letter and 14th consonant of the modern English alphabet

2. a speech sound represented by this letter, in English usually an alveolar semivowel, as in red

3. See three Rs

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r Scientific  

1. Abbreviation of radius

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R Idioms  

1. see three R's.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• R's
  plural
• Rs
  plural
• r's
  plural
• rs
  plural

Etymology

Origin of R⁵

An American designation established in 1968

Origin of R.⁹

From the Latin word recipe

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

r R r. R. R's Rs r's rs

Mark Joseph Stern: This idea of republican virtue, lowercase r, civic virtue, the Framers were obsessed with it.

From Slate ● Aug. 17, 2026

But AI systems also fail to count how often the letter r appears in “strawberry.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 21, 2025

All togethe r, Pfizer and its peers seem to have come out far better than expected from the Trump administration’s pricing and tariff gambits.

From Barron's ● Sep. 30, 2025

The tech giant has suggested the issue with its Dictation service has been caused by a problem it has distinguishing between words with an "r" in them.

From BBC ● Feb. 26, 2025

Y r u being so creepy n txting my frnd?

From "Ask the Passengers" by A.S. King

At the meeting, Supervisor Steve Lavagnino noted that, in his district, Santa Maria High School is directly across the street from a firearms store called Get R Gun.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026

The Multistrada is typically shopped against the equally intrepid BMW R 1300 GS; and KTM’s 1390 Super Adventure.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 29, 2026

In younger adults, higher levels of R inulinivorans were associated with both stronger handgrip and higher VO2 max.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 22, 2026

A higher sustainable growth rate lifts the economy’s equilibrium interest rate, or what’s known as R*.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026

From top to ground level, they are: U and Z T and Y S and X R and W Q and V The Q-and-V galleries are on the flats.

From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover

For Chicago, Sharon chose avery r. young, a Chicago-born Black poet, composer and activist.

From Washington Times ● Apr. 28, 2021

By tracking only bats collected from N. r. elongata pitchers, he says, Grafe's team may have missed individuals that used other roosting spots and overestimated the importance of pitchers to the species as a whole.

From Science Magazine ● Jan. 26, 2011

As pitcher plants go, N. r. elongata is especially well suited to the bats.

From Science Magazine ● Jan. 26, 2011

The conventional shot at a 6-ft. range on a film 14 by 17 in. delivers .06 to .1 r. to the chest, about .001 r. to the gonads.

From Time Magazine Archive

She erected a big white sign in the front yard on which she had carefully painted, in black letters with gold outlines, r. m. walls art studio.

From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls

Led by Chelsy R. Eddings and colleagues, including Watanabe, the work appeared online in Neuron on November 24, 2025, and in its February 4, 2026, issue.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 17, 2026

Series creator R. Scott Gemmill accepted the award, with several members of the cast and crew on stage behind him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026

The first time Samantha R. went to Burning Man, it was on a whim.

From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026

In May, the USS Gerald R. Ford came home after 11 months, becoming the longest-deployed aircraft carrier since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

His opponent, Benjamin R. Morgan, denounced the results, saying the fever had driven “respectable inhabitants” out of town.

From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy

Also, a radical idea: “We need to ensure that our students are graduating with the right grade level skills of the 4 R’s: reading, writing, arithmetic, and reasoning.”

From Slate ● Feb. 5, 2024

You’re in such a unique position because vintage dealers are often checking off each box in the three R’s of recycling: reduce, reuse, recycle.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2023

Their “Threepenny” selections in particular demonstrated how best to balance the piece’s infectious melodies and bitter texts: Gerstein’s playing buoyant and dancing, Gruber’s semi-Sprechstimme snarling, with wickedly rolling R’s on phrases like “Beefsteak Tartar.”

From New York Times ● Jul. 11, 2023

On his first state visit, he displayed an ability to properly roll his R’s while flipping between German and English in a speech to the Bundestag, the German parliament.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 24, 2023

Remarkably, the three R’s of gene physiology are acutely dependent on the molecular structure of DNA—on the Watson-Crick base pairing of the double helix.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

All to the good, but you find nothing about getting kids ready to learn the 3 Rs.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

To go American, Mielewska said it's all about getting the Rs and the vowels right.

From Barron's ● Mar. 5, 2026

According to the team, the foundation of a circular space economy lies in the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 3, 2025

My 4-year-old grandson can count the three Rs in strawberry.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 3, 2025

When Mr. MacMahon said words like terrible he made it sound like they had seven or eight Rs in ’em ’stead of just one.

From "Elijah of Buxton" by Christopher Paul Curtis

New England is ready to absorb Scotland as its seventh state as soon as the Scots agree to stop pronouncing their r’s.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 29, 2026

Leto’s grumbling Brit-inflected baritone is an unrecognizable concoction of trilled r’s and plummy vowels — and the best performance he’s done in years.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2026

Ms. Walters, who died Dec. 30 at her home in New York, according to ABC, spent the following decades overcoming her mangled r’s and became one of television’s premier interrogators of the newsworthy.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2022

Deslorieux has the strongest voice of the main cast, crooning with delicate rolling r’s for her character’s accent.

From New York Times ● Nov. 4, 2021

She spoke with a little bit of a Mexican accent, trilling her r's.

From "Holes" by Louis Sachar

There's a lot of spoken dialogue and I was doing my best to not sound too horribly American - - to soften my rs and elongate my vowels.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 8, 2012

Two years ago Promoter Vandeburg talked Fair managers into selling their Big Show rs a peg on which to hang a national campaign of travel to eleven far-western States instead of merely plugging San Francisco.

From Time Magazine Archive

Morgan Stanley and Goldman, Sachs will each get $4 million for their work in fine-tuning the financial details of the Chemical-Manufacture rs Hanover deal.

From Time Magazine Archive

Rolling his rs, the Rev. Peter Marshall, Scottish-born chaplain of the U.S.

From Time Magazine Archive

Then came the Old Bear with the main force, Ser Mallador Locke with the baggage train and packhorses, and finally Ser Ottyn Wythe rs and the rear guard.

From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin