Definition of "rote" []

• A memorizing process using routine or repetition, often without full attention or comprehension: learn by rote. (noun)
• Mechanical routine. (noun)
• The sound of surf breaking on the shore. (noun)
• A medieval stringed instrument variably identified with a lyre, lute, or harp. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The era of photocopied vocabulary lists read by rote is thankfully over, thanks to textbooks like Compelling Conversations."
• "Bringing it back to Freshwater: it looks as though he was given a simplistic test scheme which he could game by playing the short-term rote memorisation card with his classes, while pandering to his own religious prejudices."
• "It had never entered my head that I had what it took to dolmetsch … While a student, I had learned the first stanza of Die Lorelei by rote from a college roommate, and I happened to give those lines a dogged rendition while working within earshot of the battalion commander …"