Other forms: ashes
Ash is the soft grey powder a fire leaves when there is nothing left to burn. You rake it out of the grate cold in the morning, and it goes everywhere — on your sleeve, in the carpet, a grey ring on the hearth.
In the plural it does heavier work. After a cremation the ashes are what a family carries home, and a burnt-out building is left in ashes. A volcano throws ash high enough to ground flights across a continent. Ash is a colour as well, a pale cool grey, which is where ash blonde hair gets its name. And there is a second ash with nothing to do with fire: the ash tree, tall and straight, whose springy pale wood makes tool handles, oars and hockey sticks.
1nounashThe soft grey powder left when something has burned.~78%
“He shovelled the ash out of the grate.”
synonyms: cinders
2nounpluralIn the plural, what remains of a body after cremation.~9%
“They scattered her ashes on the hill.”
3nountallA tall tree with pale springy wood — a different word with the same spelling.~11%
“An ash grows fast and straight.”
4adjectivecolourA pale, cool grey.~2%
“She dyed her hair ash blonde.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 185 sentences found in the wild and placed 82 of them on a sense (103 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: ashes
Two different words share this spelling, and they always did. The grey powder goes back to an ancient root covering dryness, burning and the hearth itself — the root Latin āreō, to be parched, came from. The tree came down a separate line from Old English æsċ, which is German Esche and Swedish ask. Only the spelling brought them together.
Middle English
asshe
English, today
ash
From Middle English asshe. From Middle English aisshe, asche, ash, asshe, axe, eshe, esk, from Old English acse, asċe, axe, axse, æsċe, from Proto-West Germanic askā, from Proto-Germanic askǭ (“ash”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂eHs- (“to be dry; to burn; hearth; ashes”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA