runlet

From run +‎ -let. Compare runnel.

runlet (plural runlets)

1. A small brook or stream.
   • 1876, James Russell Lowell, “Milton”, in Among My Books. Second Series., Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 255:

     The biographer, especially of a literary man, need only mark the main currents of tendency, without being officious to trace out to its marshy source every runlet that has cast in its tiny pitcherful with the rest.

   • 1931 February 9, William Faulkner, Sanctuary (The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books; no. 61), New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, published 1962, →OCLC:

     She followed the dry runlet to where a jutting shoulder formed a nook matted with briars.

From Middle English roundelet, from Old French rondelet (“roundlet”). More at roundlet.

runlet (plural runlets)

1. (archaic) A wine measure, equivalent to 18 gallons.
   • 1820, Walter Scott, chapter X, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 266–267:

     […] our cellarer shall have orders to deliver to thee a butt of sack, a runlet of Malvesie, and three hogsheads of ale of the first strike, yearly—If that will not quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and become acquainted with my butler.