lee

• IPA^(key): /liː/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iː
• Homophones: le, lea, Lea, Lee, leigh, Leigh, li, Li, Lie

From Middle English lee, from Old English hlēo, hlēow (“shelter, protection”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlaiw, from Proto-Germanic *hlaiwaz (compare German Lee (“lee”), Swedish lä, Danish læ, Norwegian le, Old Norse hlé, Dutch lij), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱley- (compare Welsh clyd (“warm, cozy”), Latin calēre (“to warm up”), Lithuanian šiltas (“warm, pleasant”), Sanskrit शरद् (śarad, “autumn”)).

lee (plural lees)

1. (nautical) A protected cove or harbor, out of the wind.
2. (nautical) The side of the ship away from the wind.
3. A sheltered place, especially a place protected from the wind by some object; the side sheltered from the wind (see also leeside); shelter; protection.

   the lee of a mountain, an island, or a ship

   • 1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “(please specify the chapter)”, in [Le Morte Darthur], (please specify the book number), [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: David Nutt, […], 1889, →OCLC:

     We lurked under lee.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1873, John Tyndall, “Niagara”, in Fragments of Science, published 1907, page 182:

     Desiring me to take shelter in his lee.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 5]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of the station wall. No-one.

4. Calm, peace.

• (geology) stoss
• (nautical) weather, windward

lee (not comparable)

Lee side on the left; stoss side on the right

1. (nautical, geology) Facing away from the flow of a fluid, usually air.

   lee side, lee shore, lee helm

lee (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) Lees; dregs.
   • 1745, [Edward Young], “Night the Eighth. Virtue’s Apology: Or The Man of the World Answered. In which are Considered, the Love of This Life; the Ambition and Pleasure, with the Wit and Wisdom, of the World.”, in The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, London: […] [Samuel Richardson] for A[ndrew] Millar […], and R[obert] Dodsley […], published 1750, →OCLC, page 264:

     A thousand demons lurk within the lee.

lee (plural lees)

1. Obsolete form of li (“traditional Chinese unit of distance”).
   • 1865, John Francis Davis, Chinese Miscellanies: A Collection of Essays and Notes, page 184:

     Here, after little less than a month's protracted journey over a distance, by the Chinese itinerary, of 950 lees, and by our own calculation 280 miles, from the canal, we quitted the magnificent Keang to cross the lake […]

• Lee in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
• “lee”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “lee”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• on one's lee-lane (probably etymologically unrelated)

• ELE, eel

Cognates include Saho lay.

• IPA^(key): /ˈleː/, [ˈleː]
• Hyphenation: lee

lée f (plural lelwá f)

1. water

• Loren F. Bliese (1981) A Generative Grammar of Afar‎, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington (doctoral thesis)., page 5
• E. M. Parker, R. J. Hayward (1985) “lee”, in An Afar-English-French dictionary (with Grammatical Notes in English), University of London, →ISBN
• Tomoyuki Yabe, The Morphosyntax of Complex Verbal Expressions in the Horn of Africa (2007), which cites Hayward (1976) as the source of a usage example lee fax-te "the water boiled"
• Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015) L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)‎, Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis), page 99

lee

1. little

• Crosbie, Paul, ed. (2007), Kriol-Inglish Dikshineri: English-Kriol Dictionary. Belize City: Belize Kriol Project, p. 212.

< Swedish lä (“lee”)

• IPA^(key): /ˈleː/, [ˈle̞ː]
• Rhymes: -eː
• Syllabification^(key): lee

lee

1. (nautical) lee (side of the ship away from the wind)
2. (nautical) lee (place protected from the wind by some object)

   saaren lee ― lee of an island

• (side of ship): suojanpuoli

• ele

lee

1. inflection of lear:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

lee

1. second-person singular imperative of leeën

From Old English lēogan.

lee

1. To lie; to speak falsely.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Chaucer to this entry?)

lee

1. egg

From ledd.

lee (present tense leer, past tense lea or leet, past participle lea or leet)

1. to move; to make a body part, or a thing (such as a bolder), move

• “lee” in The Bokmål Dictionary.
• “lee” in Det Norske Akademis ordbok (NAOB).

lee (present tense lear, past tense lea, past participle lea, passive infinitive least, present participle leande, imperative lee/le)

1. Alternative form of lea

• leh (Dundee)

From Old English lēogan.

lee (third-person singular simple present lees, present participle leein, simple past leet, past participle leet)

1. To lie (tell lies).
   • 1876, S[arah] R. Whitehead, “On the Wrong Coach”, in Daft Davie and Other Sketches of Scottish Life and Character, London: Hodder and Stoughton, […], →OCLC, page 220:

     ‘It’s a lee,’ says the man; ‘she’s either drunk or daft.’ / ‘Me drunk, you ill-tongued vagabond!’ says my Auntie Kirsty, who couldna bear such a reproach on her good name, ‘I’m a’ but blackfasting this day from either meat or drink; you had better no meddle wi’ my character.’

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• IPA^(key): /ˈlee/ [ˈle.e]
• Rhymes: -ee
• Syllabification: le‧e

lee

1. inflection of leer:
   1. third-person singular present indicative
   2. second-person singular imperative

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɪ.ɪ/

lee class 5 (plural mae)

1. egg

From Middle English lien, liggen, from Old English liċġan, from Proto-West Germanic *liggjan.

• lidge

• IPA^(key): /liː/, /lɪd͡ʒ/
• Homophones: laaye, lea, leigh, leeigh

lee (second-person singular simple present leeesth, simple past lidg'd)

1. to lie, lay

lee

1. Alternative form of laave (“leave”)

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 52