Rolex

//ˈɹəʊlɛks// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A luxury wristwatch produced by the brand Rolex SA.

    "He pulled up his sleeve and there on his scrawny arm hung a Rolex the size of Big Ben."

  2. 2
    An omelette served inside a chapati. Uganda

    "Rolex is a chapati roll with fried eggs stuffed in, accompanied with fresh vegetable salad."

Example

More examples

"This gold Rolex is an expensive watch alien to my lifestyle."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Coined ex nihilo by German watchmaker Hans Wilsdorf in 1908 as a trade name. Wildorf later explained: "I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered ‘Rolex’ in my ear."

Etymology 2

Blend of rolled + eggs. The name rolex comes from its method of preparation, with the chapati and the egg omelette rolled together.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.