ale

UK/eɪl/US/eɪl/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,140 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: ales

Ale is a strong beer brewed without hops. A pint of ale, real ale, brown ale.

The old distinction was hops: ale had none and beer did, and hopped beer won because hops preserve it. Now ale means beer made with top-fermenting yeast at warmer temperatures, as against lager. Real ale is cask beer that finishes fermenting in the cask. Note that the word is Old English.

Definitions of ale

1nounaleBeer made with top-fermenting yeast.B1+
“The old pub serves a dark ale brewed in the village.”

ale is a drink.

Where it comes from

Old English ealu names the drink, from a Germanic root. Swedish ol and Danish ol are the same word.

Middle English
ale
English, today
ale

Built from

*h₂elu- · Proto-Indo-European — bitter

From Middle English ale. From Middle English ale, from Old English ealu, ealo, from Proto-West Germanic alu, from Proto-Germanic alu (compare Dutch aal, Icelandic and Swedish öl (“beer”), Danish, Faroese, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk øl (“beer”)), from Proto-Indo-European h₂elut- (“beer”), or h₂elu- (“bitter”). Compare Russian ол, Lithuanian alus, Armenian օղի; compare also Latin alum (“comfrey”), alūta (“tawed leather”), Ancient Greek ἀλύδοιμος (“bitter”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

ale in the wild

Pale ale is a golden to amber coloured beer style brewed with pale malt.
Pale ale
Different brewing practices and hop quantities have resulted in a range of tastes and strengths within the pale ale family.
Pale ale
There are two main types of ginger ale.
Ginger ale
Brown ale is a style of beer with a dark amber or brown colour.
Brown ale
Bitter is an English style of pale ale that varies in colour from gold to dark amber, and in strength typically from 3% to 5.5% alcohol by volume.
Bitter (beer)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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ale