lea
Plural: leas
Noun
- An area of open ground, especially grassland; a meadow.
- a unit of length of thread or yarn
- a field covered with grass or herbage and suitable for grazing by livestock
- An open field, meadow, pasture.
- Any of several measures of yarn; for linen, 300 yards (275 m); for cotton, 120 yards (110 m).
- A set of warp threads carried by a loop of the heddle.
Examples
- The empty board felt like a barren LEA, waiting for words to bloom.
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English legh, lege, lei (“clearing, open ground”), from Old English lēah (“clearing in a forest”) from Proto-West Germanic *lauh (“meadow”), from Proto-Germanic *lauhaz (“meadow”), from Proto-Indo-European *lówkos (“field, meadow”).
Akin to Old Frisian lāch (“meadow”), Old Saxon lōh (“forest, grove”) (Middle Dutch loo (“forest, thicket”); Dutch -lo (“in placenames”)), Old High German lōh (“covered clearing, low bushes”), Old Norse lō (“clearing, meadow”).
Synonyms
grazing land, ley, pasture, pastureland, rap
Scrabble Score: 3
lea: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordlea: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
lea: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary