Dictionaries › English

lee

Pronunciation: /liː/

The English word “lee” has 6 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A protected cove or harbor, out of the wind.
  2. 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.
  4. Calm, peace.
  5. Lees; dregs.

adjective

  1. Facing away from the flow of a fluid, usually air.

Etymology

From Middle English lee, from Old English hlēo, hlēow (“shelter, protection”), from Proto-West Germanic *hlaiw (whence also Proto-Slavic *xlěvъ), 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,…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “lee” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.