Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🔁 A boring routine 🛤️ A ground groove 🦌 To mate (animals) 🦌 Animal mating time 🛤️ To make grooves
to rut

to rut

5 9.7
To be sexually active and try to mate, usually in male animals
  • verb
  • /rʌt/
  • Specialized
: estar en celo
  • Weasels are vigorous but much more discreet when rutting, as a rule.
  • rutting buck
  • rutting deer
  • rutting bulls

Examples

  • During the mating season, the stag will rut loudly to attract female mates.

  • Almost all hunted caribou, which is nearly a year-round pursuit in this village, notwithstanding a concentration of effort from June to early October when the bulls rut.

    Academic text (2007)

  • We're so pathetic, rutting like rabbits.

    Bad Dreams (1988)

  • A mere two weeks after this, I see him rutting in the temple yard.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Bucks are rutting pretty good right now; the 5-pointer I shot this morning was hanging tight with about 7 does (they ran off after I shot him).

    Blog text (25)

  • The male deer began to rut in the forest, marking his territory with scent.

  • As autumn arrived, the bulls could be heard rutting near the streams, signaling their readiness to mate.

Idioms

in a rut
  • Informal
22 6.7

Stuck doing the same boring things and not making progress for a long time

Phrasal Verbs

to get out of a rut
  • Informal
1 4.2

To try new things to stop feeling bored and stuck

to break the rut
1 6.0

To get out of the same boring routine

How Active

to mate
  • NSFW
84 2.8
to rut
  • Specialized
5 9.7
to court
  • Formal
55 4.2

Surface Forms

rut infinitive
rutted past
rutted past participle
rutting present participle
ruts third person singular

Etymology

Rut (verb, animals in mating state) likely comes from an old word for wild, driven behaviour in animals, so to 'rut' is to be in a state of strong desire and activity to mate.